“A Nomad of the Time Streams”, by Michael Moorcock

 

 

484 pages, White Wolf Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1565041790

 

Over the course of the mid-to-late 90s, White Wolf Publishing produced this massive omnibus collection of Michael Moorcock’s “Eternal Champion” stories, a recurrent aspect in many of his tales. A Nomad of the Time Streams was the fourth in this series featuring the character Oswald Bastable, and includes the tales The Warlord of the Air, The Land Leviathan and The Steel Tsar.

 

Strange as it may sound, Michael Moorcock did not, in fact, create the character of Oswald Bastable: in 1890, E. Nesbit (that would be Edith Nesbit, married name Edith Bland) created Oswald Bastable and his five siblings for a series of children’s novels: The Story of the Treasure Seekers (1899), The Wouldbegoods (1901), The New Treasure Seekers (1904) and Oswald Bastable and Others (1905). Moorcock has stated, in response to numerous questions on his website forum, that the name “Oswald Bastable” wasn’t linked to Nesbit’s character but was, instead, linked to a particular “Fabian ‘liberal’ imperialism, still fundamentally paternalistic but well-meaning” that he thought Nesbit aspired to (Nesbit and her husband, Hubert Bland, were among the founders and leading members of the Fabian Society, who sought to establish Socialism in Britain in a gradual manner). So Moorcock’s Bastable books explore various variants on the theme of Imperialism and Colonialism: the British and other colonial empires persisting into the later 20^th Centuries, or conversely collapsing already in the early 1900s, and so on.

 

With all that said, Moorcock’s character is quite a different species: he is Captain Oswald Bastable of the 53^rd Lancers and Special Air Police; the conceit of these books is that Moorcock has discovered a safe, tucked away in the family attic in 1973; within are the lost narratives of Bastable’s adventures across time, about how with English grit and British integrity this brave English airshipman defends the mighty Pax Britannica maintained by the airfleet of dirigibles. The Warlord of the Air takes place on Earth in an alternative 1973: all of the great powers are still intact and keep the peace (more or less) via grand fleets of airships, the mightiest of which is maintained by the still-mighty British Empire (no Commonwealth here), ruled by King Edward VIII and his Queen, Wallis. This is a pretty terrific world-building exercise, a kind of pre-Steampunk creation that influenced much of what came later with the idea that Imperialism is forever. Bastable’s general character arc is that of the lonesome traveler lost not only in time, but in ideology, as well, for while Oswald may be an upholder of the Pax Britannica he still has his doubts about the Empire he serves. Moorcock is no imperialist sympathizer; quite the opposite, actually, although the number of straw men set up and knocked down could be used to thatch the roofs of a whole village. This world of perpetual Empires is stagnant, with Victorian technology, morals and even styles still very much in vogue, and proof that you can’t stop history and, regardless of who are the culprits are, certain things will inevitably come to happen.

 

The Land Leviathan is a framed much like The Warlord of the Air, with Moorcock printing his grandfather’s “introductory notes” in which the long-passed senior Moorcock travels to the Valley of the Morning for adventures of his very own, wherein in comes into possession of the remnants of Bastable’s story. Bastable’s second adventure starts with a return to Teku Benga to see if the place was real or just a dream, but, all too soon, the global political and cultural milieu take center stage in his life, whether he wants them to or not. This time it’s an alternative 1903 and the world has been irrevocably changed by O’Bean, an Irish immigrant inventor living in Chile. Read the story for yourself for all of the technological details, but suffice to say that Moorcock’s leftish re-envisioning of the near-past is what one might expect. The Land Leviathan is a lefty Englishman’s commentary on the (then) contemporary United States and its comeuppance, a kind of Steampunk take on the social and political state of world politics circa 1970-something, with racial and authoritarian motifs emerging to swamp the story. This can get tedious after a (very little) while, but the story is never boring, as we follow Oswald Bastable and his somewhat reluctant quests to uphold the Pax Britannica.

 

Lastly is The Steel Tsar, which imagines a world in which the imperial shoe is on the other foot, as the focus now shifts to Southeast Asia, Japan, Russia and Ukraine. Starting with the usual conceit of a discovered manuscript, Bastable once again finds himself mysteriously arriving at a strange place and time; after locating himself, he (naturally) becomes embroiled in the mightiest political struggles of the day, leading to a conclusion with a (tedious lefty) agenda. The airships from The Warlord of the Air thankfully make a reappearance, but the story all comes down to the Steel Tsar, his identity and motivations, and while the politically loaded conclusion is what one has come to expect from these Bastable tales, it is no less exciting for all of that. The last book in the series, Moorcock reveals not only the secrets behind Una Persson and Bastable’s time travel capabilities, but also is more overt in the novel’s political commentary – just in case readers of the first two novels missed the point.  An alternate history of an alternate history, readers who enjoyed The Warlord of the Air and The Land Leviathan will find nothing to complain about in The Steel Tsar. As a side note: while it is not necessary to read the three Oswald Bastable books in order, there are certainly benefits to doing so.  Simply put, the over-arching theme and frame story gel when read in publishing order.  So, if intrigued, start with The Warlord of the Air as a test to the series suitability to your interests.  If you like it, then by all means continue with The Land Leviathan, then The Steel Tsar as they are consistent follow ups.

“Treasure Island”, by Robert Louis Stevenson

 

328 pages, Rand, McNally & Company

The Fraser Public Library has a book sale every summer, at the end of which I was asked to throw out the books that patrons had donated but that did not sell – like this one, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, part of the Canterbury Classics line and published in – are you ready? – 1903! Now, I understand probably why it didn’t sell, being that its in rather rough shape and all, but it is still intact and able to be read. So I took it. Why, you ask? Why pick up a 120-year-old edition of a book I could get brand new…anywhere? History, Dear Reader, history; as in personal history, for this copy has all sorts of notes and jottings from past owners that add a certain something a new book doesn’t have. Alva Frederick, whom I presume was the original owner, wrote her name in the front, while Paul Kiesling added his sometime later. Someone scribbled notes on personal hygiene found in paragraphs 168 and 186, while on the back page can be found jottings…that I can’t decipher. Was it Alva who wrote these? Or Paul? Or someone else entirely? Don’t know. But the mere fact that this century-plus old book contains the writings of people long gone is a detail that sends shivers up my spine and reminds one why used books are the best books.

So there. Anyway, am I ever glad that I took this book for, while I was, of course, familiar with the tale, having seen the 1972 version in which Orson Welles played Long John Silver (and even the animated 2002 adaptation, Treasure Planet), I never appreciated just what a fine piece of fiction Treasure Island really is. This edition was of the Canterbury Classics line by Rand, McNally & Company and was intended as a teaching tool, edited by one Theda Gildemeister, who was the Training Teacher in the State Normal School in Winona, Minnesota (birthplace of one Winona Laura Horowitz…er, Ryder). As such, it was intended to “bear its share in acquainting school children with literature suited to their years”. Quite. But just what kind of kids are we talking about here? This kind:

 

That childhood is poor that has not had for friends many of the goodly company represented by Hector, Achilles, Roland, Sigurd, My [El] Cid, Don Quixote, Lancelot, Robin Hood, Percy, the Douglas, Gulliver, Puck, Rip Van Winkle, and Alice in Wonderland. College class-rooms, where Dante and Spencer, Goethe and Coleridge are taught, speedily feel the difference between minds nourished from babyhood up, on myths of Olympus and myths of Asgard, Hans Christian Anderson, old ballads, the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’’, the ‘Arabian Nights’, the ‘Alhambra’, and minds which are still strangers to fairyland and hero-land and all the dreamlands of the world’s inheritance. Minds of this later description come almost as barbarians to the study of poetry, deaf to its music and blind to its visions [emphasis added].

In these few sentences, Katharine Lee Bates (of Wellesley College) described the modern college know-it-all who is ignorant of so much of the Western canon. How many of our “woke” darlings of today spent “goodly company” with the heroes of their culture’s past? How obvious is it that they are barbarians because they know nothing of the myths that nourished their ancestors’ hearts and minds? How many are so intellectually stunted and have nothing but needless and destructive hate towards the culture that raised them and are indeed “deaf” and “blind” to their own cultural inheritance? It’s frightening to think of the numbers of these masses that our universities have churned out in the name of passing fads and intellectual fashions that will not stand the test of time, unlike the classics that they denigrate so, out of recognition of their superiority, I suspect.

So what is it about Treasure Island that has made it a timeless classic, popular with generations of readers since its original serialization in 1881/82? That it’s a Boy’s Own Adventure featuring pirates, voyages, danger, treasure and all the rest goes a long way to explaining its appeal. But there’s something more than that, a deeper meaning underneath the piratical razzmatazz. Stevenson illustrates that the search for treasure and the pursuit of avarice pale in comparison to the pursuit of self-knowledge and the search for wisdom; characters led by their greed for material wealth are drawn down paths of treachery and violence and suffer devastating consequences as a result, while those seeking personal advancement – exemplified, of course, by Jim Hawkins – attain pride in substantial accomplishments in growth and learning.

Would I have ferreted all of that out if I had read this book as a kid? Um…sure (although I rather suspect not). No doubt I would have reveled in the search for hidden treasure and the race against pirates and the approval of adults that are all to be found in Treasure Island. The deeper meaning may have passed me by, but maybe, just maybe, I would have grown along with Jim and seen the truth behind the idea that the search for the treasure of the world pales in comparison to the search for the treasure of the spirit. Perhaps I would have seen the dangers of avarice and the rewards of generosity and become a better person before my time. And perhaps, just perhaps, the Woke Mobs who populate our university campuses and spew hate on all and sundry would have grown too if they had read Treasure Island and other classics of the Western canon they despise.

“All Quiet on the Western Front”, by Erich Maria Remarque

 

175 pages, Crest/Fawcett Publications, ISBN-13: 978-0449005460

Way back in junior high, when I was in study hall and had nothing better to do (what, I’m gonna study? In study hall?) I came across All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque and figured “Eh, what the hell”. And man, am I glad I did. The author (actually Erich Paul Remark; not sure why the name change) was a German novelist with fifteen novels and five other works to his name including this, his most famous piece by far. All Quiet on the Western Front (or Im Westen nichts Neues, “In the West Nothing New”) tells the story of Paul Bäumer, who belongs to a group of German soldiers on the Western Front during The Great War. After his and his comrade’s initial patriotic enthusiasm to fight for Kaiser und Vaterland has worn off, Paul and the other men in his unit find themselves fighting a war they no longer believe in for a cause they no longer support. All Quiet on the Western Front, then, tells the all-too familiar story of men caught in a catastrophic situation not of their making and their futile attempts to escape it – with the only escape possible typically being death.

There are several themes that Remarque tackles across these mere 175 pages, but he does so with such brevity and insightfulness that each powerfully strikes the reader. One is the horror of modern, industrialized warfare, in which men are thrown into the maw of battle like so much raw material in a factory, only instead of churning out products, the war machine produces only corpses. Set in the final years of the war, the novel is famous for its extremely graphic depictions of life and death in the trenches where fighting was grueling, inefficient and pointless and in which the point of battles seemed not victory over the enemy but rather the capture a few hundred yards of land that cost the lives of thousands of men. Those who survived direct attacks often suffered catastrophic shrapnel injuries, losing arms, legs and even faces, to say nothing of the deep psychological trauma they suffered. Soldiers, like those in Paul’s regiment, became detached from the men they killed, and the threat of a vague, unforeseeable death hangs over them all; as Paul observes repeatedly, no one can survive the war completely unscathed.

This leads to another theme of the novel, the simple need to survive the Front. Soldiers must be prepared to act unthinkingly in battle, no matter how horrifying these actions might have once seemed in their long-dead, civilian lives. The men revert to animal instinct under fire, suppressing all higher thought and where emotions like pity, grief, or disgust are fatal to them, as they might cause any one of them to hesitate or second-guess themselves. Paul’s calm, neutral attitude towards his experiences is almost as disturbing as the carnage he describes, but as Paul himself explains, becoming desensitized to the horror around him is the only way he can keep going. Only rarely is an event traumatic enough to briefly break down these mental barriers, as, for example, when Paul is trapped alone for hours with the body of a French soldier he has killed – the only soldier he kills face-to-face, as it happens – or when his best friend Katczinsky (Kat) is killed by a shrapnel fragment. Desensitized, dehumanized, with only the basest desires still intact; that is the life of a soldier on either side of the Western Front.

The soldier’s desire to fight – not for Kaiser or Germany or whatever – for the man next to him is another theme. For Paul, the one positive aspect of the war experience is that it forges extraordinarily strong bonds between soldiers as the men of the Second Company are comrades-in-arms, closer than family or even lovers. They have seen unspeakable horrors and endured unimaginable suffering together, experiences they will never be able to share with those who did not fight. While the war creates sharp distinctions between soldiers and civilians, it also erases other distinctions; well-educated young men, like Paul, fight and die alongside peasants, like Detering. Comradeship is such an intense bond that one would expect the death of one soldier to trigger strong emotional reactions from the others, but grief is a luxury these battle-hardened soldiers cannot afford. Apart from brief outbursts of rage or sorrow, the men are unable to properly mourn their fallen friends, and Paul becomes increasingly numb to these losses over the course of the novel until the novel’s final paragraph suggests that Paul welcomes his own death.

The Lost Generation is another theme, illustrated best when Paul, though often dreaming about his life before the war, knows that he can never return to it. The war has destroyed an entire generation of young men, leaving them “lost” and unable to physically and psychologically recover or unable to readjust to their past lives. Paul experiences the jarring effects of this transformation most clearly when he briefly returns to his home village on leave: while the village hasn’t changed, he has, and so he feels completely out of place there. His old interests in literature and art, represented by the shelves of books in his childhood room, now seem childish and unreal; he feels alienated from his father and his former teachers, who expect him to play the role of the heroic young soldier. Only his ailing mother seems to understand his reluctance to discuss what has happened to him (leave it to Mom to suss out the truth). When his leave ends, Paul is almost relieved to return to the front as his trip home reinforces his conviction that the war has created an unbridgeable divide between the young men who fight and the communities they have left behind.

Last is the hypocrisy of the old generation that sent the new to war. When the war began in 1914, many Germans viewed the conflict as an opportunity for Germany to prove her worth against the other nations of Europe. Young men were expected to support the national cause by signing up for active duty, but these soldiers were volunteers in theory only, according to Paul, for the reality was that most had no say in the matter. Under immense pressure from parents, teachers, and politicians, young men had to enlist or risk being accused of cowardice (one of Paul’s teachers, a patriotic older man named Kantorek, even marched his class down to the local recruitment office to volunteer). Paul feels that these authority figures deceived his generation, filling their heads with romantic ideas about patriotism but failing to prepare them for the horrors of battle. He is disgusted by the hypocrisy of those who preach the virtues of sacrifice, yet are content to let other men die in their place. Even when it has become obvious that Germany cannot win, those in power stubbornly prolong the war, blinded by greed and pride.

Many of the themes in All Quiet on the Western Front are to a great extent universal and appeal to people regardless of race, creed, nationality or what have you. Remarque wrote a humanist novel that all people can recognize and identify with, which explains its longevity.

“Doctor Zhivago”, by Boris Pasternak

 

495 pages, Reader’s Digest, ISBN-13: 978-0895773425

Admit it: the instant you read the title Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, the Maurice Jarre theme popped into your head quite on its own. Naturally, like many (most?) people, my only exposure to this work was through David Lean’s 1965 epic historical romance (I would add tragedy to that mix), with its sweeping vistas, earth-shaking events, personal catastrophes and moving soundtrack. But of course, without Pasternak’s novel of revolution and forlorn loves, none of that would have happened, so thanks, Boris, for giving Hollywood access to one of the most romantic and tragic (but then I repeat myself) stories of them all.

Speaking of which, some background: Doctor Zhivago was first published in Italy in 1957 by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli – the Italian publisher, businessman and left-wing political activist – after he was shown the manuscript by an Italian journalist (and after being told by his Slavist advisor that not to publish it would “constitute a crime against culture”; well done, sir. Well done). While parts were written in the 1910s and 20s, it was completed in 1955 and submitted to the literary journal Novy Mir (New World) the next year. Perhaps Boris had faith that the Commies would recognize great work when they saw it or, just perhaps, he was naïve.

For the Soviets refused to publish Doctor Zhivago because Pasternak’s concern for individuals over society and, by extension, of the Soviet state as a whole was obvious to anyone who read his novel (his subtle criticisms of Stalinism, Collectivization, the Great Purge, the Gulag and Socialist Realism didn’t help, either). Not that it helped to deflect the novel’s popularity in the West, especially after Pasternak was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature for his role in “continuing the great Russian epic tradition”, to which Pasternak responded that he was “[i]nfinitely grateful, touched, proud, surprised, overwhelmed”.

Fat lot of good it did him, for the KGB surrounded Pasternak’s dacha in Peredelkino and not only threatened him with arrest but also vowed to send his mistress Olga Ivinskaya back to the gulag, where she had been imprisoned under Stalin; it was further hinted that, should Pasternak travel to Stockholm to collect his Nobel Medal, he would be refused re-entry to the Soviet Union. As a result, Pasternak officially declined his Nobel Prize, to which the committee responded in turn that “[t]his refusal, of course, in no way alters the validity of the award. There remains only for the Academy, however, to announce with regret that the presentation of the Prize cannot take place”.

Despite his decision to decline the award, the Soviet Union of Writers continued to denounce Pasternak in the Soviet press; furthermore, he was threatened at the very least with formal exile to the West. In response, Pasternak wrote directly to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, saying “Leaving the motherland will mean equal death for me. I am tied to Russia by birth, by life and work” (after being ousted from power in 1964, Khrushchev at last read the novel and felt great regret for having banned the book at all).  As a result of this and the intercession of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Pasternak was not expelled from Russia, where he ultimately died of lung cancer in his dacha in Peredelkino on May 30^th, 1960.

And all this for writing a book – but, man oh man, what a book, a book the Soviets were right to be concerned over, seeing as, through subtle descriptions and in-depth characterizations, Pasternak upheld the dignity of the individual against the privations of the State, whether Czarist or Soviet. This is a message that can and did resonate with the people of the Soviet Union and their never-ending struggles merely to live normal lives underneath an oppressive regime that was determined to allow them to do anything but. For during the misbegotten lifespan of the Soviet Union, it was the State and its inhuman ideology that were of paramount importance, not the person.

As to Doctor Zhivago’s appeal outside of the USSR, that should come as no surprise, for this self-same message serves to inspire any and all who seek personal freedom from the hands of any all-controlling apparatus, be it communist regime, socialist state, fascist nation, religious autocracy – hell, even a democratic republic; for any and all forms of controlling authority seeks to ever-expand its own power at the expense of the individual, even if said expansion is seen by the Powers That Be as being for the individual’s own good and even if – ESPECIALLY if – the individual in question sees no need for this “help”.

Doctor Zhivago is, ostensibly, a romance, being the tale of one man and his struggle between his wife Tonya, the woman he has pledged his honor to, and his mistress Lara, the woman to whom he has given his heart. But it is so much more than that, as it describes the fall of one society and the rise of another, of the destruction of an old culture and the creation of a new, and especially of all of the people caught and, too often, destroyed during the whole – people like Yuri Zhivago and all of those connected to him; “small” people for whom the sweep of history has no interest and yet exist all the same, asking only to live and be free. People like you and me.

“Interview with the Vampire” by Anne Rice

 

368 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN-13: 978-0345281265

If you ask me, Anne Rice shoulda stopped with Interview with the Vampire; this book, all on its own, is an excellent work of gothic horror that stretches its aesthetic to include romance, historic fiction and tragedy. Really, it’s a good book…as to the others in the so-called Vampire Chronicles – which, as of this writing, included twelve sequels, not including New Tales of the Vampires or Lives of the Mayfair Witches – what was a fine stand-alone work has become this bloated travesty in which it was obvious that Rice didn’t know how to quit. I get wanting to expand your literary universe and to tell the tales of other characters you have thought up, but each book is a marked disappointment compared to the original. Ah, well…we all know what they say about sequels.

So then…Interview with the Vampire is the 200-year-long story of Louis de Pointe du Lac as told by him to a reporter referred to simply as “the boy”. In 1791, Louis is a young indigo plantation owner living in Louisiana. Distraught by the death of his brother, he seeks death in any way possible, which is when he is approached by a vampire named Lestat de Lioncourt, who desires Louis’ immortal company. Lestat turns Louis into a vampire and the two become immortal companions. Lestat spends time feeding off slaves while Louis, who finds it morally repugnant to murder humans to survive, feeds from animals. Louis and Lestat are forced to leave when Louis’ slaves begin to fear the vampires and instigate an uprising.

Louis sets his own plantation aflame while he and Lestat also kill the slaves to keep word from spreading about vampires living in Louisiana. Gradually, Louis bends under Lestat’s diabolical influence and begins at last to feed on humans, slowly coming to terms with his vampiric nature, but also becoming increasingly repulsed by what he perceives as Lestat’s total lack of compassion for the humans he preys upon. Escaping to New Orleans, Louis feeds off a plague-ridden, 5-year-old girl whom he finds next to the corpse of her mother. Louis begins to think of leaving Lestat and going his own way but, fearing this, Lestat then turns the girl into a vampire “daughter” for them, to give Louis a reason to stay. She is then given the name Claudia. But enough spoiling…

What to make of Interview with the Vampire? Perhaps the most obvious lesson taught is that being a vampire is not all its cracked up to be. Eternal life and youth sound like great ideas, but at the cost of taking innocent life after innocent life and how that corrupts and destroys one’s soul (for lack of a better word). In Lestat we see one possible result in his utter ruthlessness; in Louis we see another eventual outcome in his world-weariness and regret at what he has become; and in Claudia we have a bit of both, in that she is as ruthless as Lestat but as regretful as Louis. So immortality sucks, as one can never change or build or create something that will outlast you. You do not live. You do not die. You…just are.

Interview with the Vampire may have started the trend that’s still around today of seeing vampires as tragic and romantic beings more to be pitied than feared, and to an extent that is true. But many of the other messages found throughout the book seem to have been lost on these later-day writers, for if one comes away from this novel wanting to actually become a vampire then one is whacked. While Lestat and, to a lesser extent, Claudia revel in their existences, their unlives are irrelevant, a fact that the much-despised but more-enlightened Louis understands all too well. It is us mere mortals that have something to live for, for our all-too-brief lives are, in fact, to be envied and cherished, unlike the meaningless existences of vampires. Just ask Louis.

“The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I”, by Roger Shattuck

 

397 pages, Vintage, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0394704159

The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I by Roger Shattuck – an American writer who was best known for his books on French literature, art and music of the 20^th Century – is his history of La Belle Époque, and what a history it is, too. This is one of my favorite eras in history, and to have a masterful historian such as Shattuck write this history is a rare treat, indeed. There are few other persons with Shattuck’s breadth of knowledge who could have accomplished this feat: the man’s working knowledge of French music, poetry, painting and theater were all impressive, but his familiarity with the behind-the-scenes scandals and drama that affected their development gives his study a legitimacy that few other works can equal. Shattuck’s understanding of what the French avant-garde represented wasn’t a style, per se, but rather “a way of life, both dedicated and frivolous” whose significance was not to be found in the work of the most celebrated talents but, rather, in the aspirations of original talents that hadn’t yet been recognized. As the man himself said:

 

Only by cutting below the most prominent figures is one likely to find men both representative of the era and significant in their own right. Their artistic identities are most discernible against their background rather than removed form it into a new context of individual greatness. Henri Rousseau, Erik Satie, Alfred Jarry, Guillaume Apollinaire: is this grouping less arbitrary than any other? They make, in fact, a singular team. Rousseau, a true artisan, painted with a combination of insight and awkwardness that earned for him double standing as both modern and primitive artist. Satie’s music partakes of the same simplicity, yet he lived in a series of scandals on the forefront of the artistic scene in Paris. Jarry’s play ‘Ubu Roi’ made him notorious at twenty-three, and within ten years he put himself in the grave with overwork, poverty, and drink. Before he died during the closing hours of World War I, Apollinaire had written some of the finest lyric poetry of the century and had assumed the leadership of Paris avant-garde. All four had colorful, significant careers, careers that might separately be ranked in the second magnitude of the epoch. Why, then, do they convey, in combination, the interplay of forces that steadily pushed the arts toward what Apollinaire called the New Spirit? The reasons are simple. Their entwined careers in Paris exactly span the period 1885-1918 and suggest a unity in artistic conviction and practice that is less clearly expressed in any single figure or in a general survey of the era. Chronologically and in spirit they set its limits. In addition, their originality and persistence worked upon more stable artists and obliged them to take into account the most audacious and sometimes foolish aspirations of the age.

 

I apologize for the long-ass quote, but sometimes its better just to let the author speak for himself rather than butcher his ideas. Speaking of which, one may legitimately ask – especially if one is French – how it is that this definitive chronicle of the French avant-garde came to be written by ce maudit américain. Perhaps, sometimes, it takes an outsider to properly discern things that are hidden or overlooked by insiders. Furthermore, while The Banquet Years was originally written way the hell back in 1968, it still wafts through one’s mind like a cool summer breeze, what with its many deft analytical anecdotes that do more to enlighten even the most dedicated historian of the age as any turgid academic history could. This is true, as well, of the thumbnail sketches of his principal subjects: the post-impressionist painter Henri Rousseau; the composer and pianist Erik Satie; the symbolist writer Alfred Jarry; and the poet, playwright, short story writer and novelist Guillaume Apollinaire – four outcasts who were barely noticed by the pointy-head longhairs of their time who nevertheless ushered-in 20^th Century modernism (for good and ill).

Can a 400-page scholarly review of French avant-garde artistic achievements legitimately be called a literary classic? It can, if it’s Roger Shattuck’s The Banquet Years.

“Hawkmoon” by Michael Moorcock

 

504 pages, White Wolf Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1565041936

Over the course of the mid-to-late 90s, White Wolf Publishing produced this massive omnibus collection of Michael Moorcock’s “Eternal Champion” stories, a recurrent aspect in many of his tales. Hawkmoon was the third in this series featuring the character Dorian Hawkmoon, Duke of Köln, and includes the tales The Jewel in the Skull, The Mad God’s Amulet, The Sword of the Dawn and The Runestaff. The protagonist is another incarnation of the Eternal Champion; born into the World of the Dark Empire, and bearing the Black Jewel embedded in his skull, Hawkmoon’s world is in fact a future, post-apocalyptic Earth which has regressed to a neofeudal era in which higher technology (flame lances, or laser weapons, and ornithopters, flying machines powered by flapping wings) exists alongside sorcery. The Empire of Granbretan is hell-bent on conquering the world at the command of the immortal King-Emperor Huon, who dwells in a fluid-filled sphere in Londra, the capital. The aristocracy of Granbretan are renowned for their cruelty and for their practice of hiding their faces behind beast-inspired masks at all times; these masks correspond to chivalric orders, and the aristocrats at the head, along with the soldiers they lead, form the armies of the King-Emperor. At the time of the first book, Köln is the last holdout in Europe as Granbretan has succeeded in conquering everyone else.

The Jewel in the Skull is the first of the “History of the Runestaff” books and features a bit of contrariness on Moorcock’s park, seeing that this Englishman has made Granbretan – Great Britain, of course – the heavies, while the German Duke of Köln (that would be Cologne) is the hero. The tale begins in Kamarg where its ruler, Count Brass, is visited by an emissary of Granbretan, Baron Meliadus, who wants to use the Count’s knowledge of the courts of Europe to better conquer them. Brass would rather like to see Europe united, but not through force, and sees the Granbretans as nothing more than degenerate barbarians. From there, all hell breaks loose as Granbretan seeks to conquer all and Dorian Hawkmoon comes to the aid of his ally. As with most of Moorcock’s books early on in his career, there is a blending of sorcery and technology in an amalgam that is just cool as hell. Hawkmoon’s distinctive “jewel in the skull” is, or course, a part of this amalgamation, while his descriptions of the barbaric and ruthless Granbretans is both distinctive and revealing (Moorcock moved to Texas in the 1990s, for reasons unknown to me), as is the city of Hamadan and the strange post-apocalyptic creatures he briefly shows. But, as usual, it is in his characterizations that Moorcock shines: heroes are heroic and villains are villainous, while supporting characters are fleshed out and given their due, especially Bowgentle, the hirsute Oladahn and the ever-mysterious Warrior in Jet and Gold.

The Mad God’s Amulet is the second of the Runestaff books and picks up the adventures of Dorian Hawkmoon immediately following The Jewel in the Skull and follows his and Oladahn’s journey back to Castle Brass in Kamarg. As with The Jewel in the Skull, an aspect of The Mad God’s Amulet is the inclusion of esoteric artifacts, amongst them the “Soryandum Machines”, which act as the MacGuffins that drives the plot along. As the story progresses, Moorcock subtly makes clear that many of the “magical” items the adventurers encounter along the way are supposed to have a foundation in technology, especially the Soryandum Machines that transformed the people of Soryandum into “ghosts” (actually, humans transformed by their own science so that they exist in another dimension). This, then, is SciFi for fans of fantasy, melding as it does two seemingly opposing genres into one. While Hawkmoon and Count Brass only had to face Baron Meliadus and the forces of Granbreton in the previous novel, Moorcock has created a broader group of villains for the follow-up, including the treacherous Sir Huillam D’Averc and, of course, the “mad god” himself. And despite Baron Meliadus’ return in true supervillain fashion, he is not the empire’s sole operative, nor is Granbreton the only baddie in this post-apocalyptic world. There’s a lot going on in The Mad God’s Amulet, but it is rather obvious that it is a “part two”, a filler novel needed to set up future works and the grand finale. For all that, good stuff.

The Sword of the Dawn is the third of the Runestaff books and finds our heroes safe, but with the Empire of Granbretan still seeking revenge. Hawkmoon and the redeemed D’Averc still oppose them, but the mysterious Runestaff has plans of its own, and Hawkmoon will find that before he can turn his attention to the Dark Empire he must first seek out the fabled “Sword of the Dawn”. One seemingly universal trait of the many different Eternal Champions is their hankering after unfinished business (retirement is not an option); this is particularly true of Hawkmoon, who doesn’t seem to be able to deal with inactivity that well. Where The Sword of the Dawn is, perhaps, better than its predecessors is in retelling the character’s motivations; while the previous books were not just mindless hack’n’slash free-for-alls and featured both protagonists and antagonists that were really three-dimensional, there was something a little lacking into just why they did what they did. The Empire of Granbretan is shown in all its dark glory, as we see that the subjects hunger for conquest with their accompanying atrocities, are caused by sheer decadence and ennui, making their crimes all the more repellent as we find out that they are motivated by the fact that the Granbretans, of the Dark Empire, are bored and fancy a change. They’re scared of running out of ideas so have made it a competition of excess instead. The Sword of the Dawn, thus, feels rather more complete as a story and a continuation of the Runestaff series, rather than as mere filer.

The Runestaff is the final volume in the Runestaff series continues the adventures of Hawkmoon as he endeavors to defeat the evil Baron Meliadus and the empire of Granbretan. Once again there’s plenty of swashbuckling from Hawkmoon and crew and braggadocio in abundance from the villains. The climax is suitably grand in scale and fitting as a conclusion to Moorcock’s enjoyable fantasy series. This is perhaps the best of the four volumes, due mainly to the fullness of the story and the consistently fast pace, although some elements are rather hurriedly wrapped-up. As a whole the series is great fun, and an ideal escapist read. But lo, you may think the adventures of good old Dorian Hawkmoon come to an end with the fourth and final novel of the Runestaff; likely, so did Moorcock (the fifth book in the series, the start of a new trilogy, wasn’t released for another four years, while these four were released over a period of a little more than twelve months). Now, with everything in place, it’s time for Hawkmoon and his friend Huillam d’Averc to seek out the Runestaff itself; the problem is that Hawkmoon isn’t fond of the idea as he’d rather go back to Castle Brass for a spell and see the rest of his friends. In the course of his erratic journey, we meet a new main character, Orland Fank (the brother of Hawkmoon’s longtime advisor The Warrior in Jet and Gold), a few brand-new monstrosities, and the like. The series comes to a conclusion that is surprisingly, in retrospect, satisfying; had Moorcock never taken up the pen and applied it to Hawkmoon again, readers of the series would likely have been satisfied with what’s here (well, perhaps “satisfied” is not the correct word; longtime fans of the Eternal Champion books will understand what I mean). In either case, a good conclusion to the series, and one of the more worthwhile books in Moorcock’s vast (and expanding) repertoire.

“Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800 – 1906”, by David Cannadine

 

624 pages, Viking, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0525557890

If I could go back in time and be anything I wanted to be, I would be a member of the English landed gentry in the 19^th Century (Did that rhyme? Total accident): I would be born on Sunday, June 18^th, 1815 (the same day as the Battle of Waterloo) and assume room temperature on Friday, May 6^th, 1910 (the same as Edward VII), and for the whole of my life I would glory in the name of Briton, because man, the era of the Pax Britannia was second to none – if you were born right. That comes across plain as day in David Cannadine’s Victorious Century: The United Kingdom, 1800 – 1906 as he charts the rise and rise of Britain from Small Islands to Top Nation and the men who made it happen (yes, it was all men; Queen Victoria may have given her name to the era but all the Big Decisions were made by men. Deal).

As to the timeframe chosen by the author, it corresponds to the Acts of Union in 1800, in which the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland resolved to unite the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland and create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Scotland having been united with England in 1707); the acts came into force on January 1^st 1801 with the merged Parliament of the United Kingdom sitting for the first time on January 22^nd, 1801. It ends with the landslide Parliamentary victory of the Liberal Party in 1906 in which the Conservatives under Arthur Balfour lost more than half their seats (including Balfour’s own, in Manchester East), leaving the Conservatives with its fewest recorded seats ever in history. Ouch. Talk about a political spanking.

As to Cannadine’s opinion of this most-important of eras, it can be best encapsulated in his quoting Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”. In his telling, Britain was able to establish and maintain its status as a global power because of its leading role in the Industrial Revolution and her Royal Navy, the largest in the world at the time. However, severe internal problems and social conflicts rocked the nation, as well, leading to the Reform Act of 1832, the Chartist movement and the Reform Act of 1867, to name but three. With Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne in 1837 a new era bearing her name opened for Britain in which active enthusiasm and the drive for a globe-spanning empire became the driving task of both the right-wing Conservative and left-wing Liberal Parties.

The Great Exhibition in 1851 is justly seen as a milestone in British cultural and imperial history, but none of the important wars, exploratory expeditions or cultural achievements are short-changed. The statesmen of the victorious century are also examined, especially William Pitt, Robert Peel, Viscount Palmerston, William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli and more, besides. The book analyzes Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee as a fitting tribute to the Queen’s reign that saw her nation become the largest empire in history and claim dominion over 412 million people (23% of the world population at the time) and cover 13,700,000 square miles (24% of the Earth’s total land area). By the time Cannadine concludes his history, the might of Britain looked permanent and unshakeable to all the world, the Brits especially.

That it would be rocked by the first European Ragnarök of 1914-18 and still sputter on through the second of 1939-45 is a testament to its strength and stability…alas, its end seems almost inevitable by today’s lights, as all of the diverse peoples around the globe at last found their footing and decided that they would much prefer their native bad government than foreign good government, thank you very much. That the British Empire ended as all empires end is not a testament to failure but rather a statement of honor, for so many of its former holdings have established and maintained the Westminster form of Parliamentary democracy that the Mother Country bestowed upon them. As Victorious Century shows, when the balance sheet is drawn up, Britain’s positive ledger is greater than its negative. 

“Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics”, by Anonymous (Joe Klein)

 

366 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: 978-0679448594

Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics was ostensibly written by “Anonymous” – who turned out to be Joe Klein in one of the worst-kept secrets ever in the history of secrets. It is a roman à clef (how’s THAT for a 5¢ phrase) about Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign in 1992 and, as such, is full of fictional stand-ins for real-life people:

• Jack Stanton is Bill Clinton
• Susan Stanton is Hillary Clinton
• Henry Burton is George Stephanopoulos
• Richard Jemmons is James Carville
• Daisy Green is Mandy Grunwald & Dee Myers
• Howard Ferguson, III is Harold Ickes, Jr.
• Orlando Ozio is Mario Cuomo
• Jimmy Ozio is Andrew Cuomo
• Charlie Martin is Bob Kerrey
• Lawrence Harris is Paul Tsongas
• Bart Nilson is Tom Harkin
• Freddy Picker is a combo of Jerry Brown, Reubin Askew, Harold Hughes & Ross Perot
• Richmond Rucker is David Dinkins
• Luther Charles is Jesse Jackson
• Cashmere McLeod is Gennifer Flowers
• Lucille Kauffman is Susan Thomases
• Libby Holden is Betsey Wright & Vince Foster

Don’t fret none if you don’t recognize all of those names as they have since left the public eye after being so damn important and powerful in the 90s. The book begins as an idealistic former congressional worker, Henry Burton, joins the presidential campaign of southern governor Jack Stanton, before following the Democratic primary election calendar, beginning in New Hampshire, where Stanton’s affair with his wife’s hairdresser, Cashmere McLeod, and his participation in a Vietnam War era protest come to light and threaten to derail his presidential prospects.

In Florida, Stanton revives his campaign by disingenuously portraying his Democratic opponent as insufficiently pro-Israel and as a weak supporter of Social Security. Burton becomes increasingly disillusioned with Stanton, who is a policy wonk who talks too long, eats too much and is overly flirtatious toward women. Stanton is also revealed to be insincere in his beliefs, saying whatever will help him to win. Matters finally come to a head, and Burton is forced to choose between idealism and realism.

One wonders as to Joe Klein’s motivation in writing this book. Was it a friendly critique of a president he admired? Or wanted to admire? A hit piece on a president he despised? Or at least should have been better? There can be no doubt that he comes at his subject, Jack Stanton (Bill Clinton) from a realistic, though sympathetic, angle, showing the man for who and what he is, warts and all. Just like his real-world stand-in, Jack Stanton is a born politician with a gift for gab and a will to power. But politics is the Art of the Possible and, inevitably, that means compromise.

Although the book shows that Stanton has compromised so much that he has forgotten where he started, his core impulse is to help people through an ever-expanding government (well, he is a Democrat, after all). The real Bill Clinton is a far less noble creature than the fake Jack Stanton, for Clinton wanted power above all else and to be loved by the multitude; in most ways the character of Jack Stanton in Primary Colors more attractive than the Bill Clinton in real life, which should come as no surprise; he is, after all, fictitious.

But getting back to Klein’s motivation for writing Primary Colors in the first place: I think he was trying to will the Clinton he knew and covered into becoming the Jack Stanton he invented; a flawed and, in some ways, despicable character who still, underneath it all, had a Heart of Gold and an honest desire to help The People through an ever-expanding government. At one point in the book, when his campaign is in deep trouble, Stanton speaks at a unionized shipyard; with little to lose, he reaches out to his audience:

Well, I’m here now, and I’m lookin’ at you, and you wouldn’t believe me if I told you what you wanted to hear in any case, right? So let me tell you this: No politician can bring these shipyard jobs back. Or make your union strong again. No politician can make it be the way it used to be. Because we’re living in a new world now, a world without borders – economically, that is. Guy can push a button in New York and move a billion dollars to Tokyo before you blink an eye. We’ve got a world market now. And that’s good for some. In the end, you’ve gotta believe it’s good for America. We come from everywhere in the world, so we’re gonna have a leg up selling to everywhere in the world. Makes sense, right? But muscle jobs are gonna go where muscle labor is cheap – and that’s not here. So if you want to compete and do better, you’re gonna have to exercise a different set of muscles, the ones between your ears. And anyone who gets up here and says he can do it for you isn’t leveling with you. So I’m not gonna insult you by doing that. I’m going to tell you this: This whole country is gonna have to go back to school. We’re gonna have to get smarter, learn new skills. And I will work overtime figuring out ways to help you get the skills you need. I’ll make you this deal: I will work for you. I’ll wake up every morning thinking about you. I’ll fight and worry and sweat and bleed to get the money to make education a lifetime thing in this country, to give you the support you need to move on up.

Officially, that’s Jack Stanton talking, but really, it’s Joe Klein – and it’s what he wanted Bill Clinton to say and how he wanted Bill Clinton to say it. And how many other members of the Drive-by Media could say the same? After writing a realistic though ultimately sympathetic portrayal of a president he was supposed to report on in a non-partisan fashion, could anything Klein said about Clinton be taken at face-value? Of course not. And it can only make one wonder how much “reporting” the MSM does is, in fact, fiction.

“Jacobson’s, I Miss It So!: The Story of a Michigan Fashion Institution”, by Bruce Allen Kopytek

 

208 pages, The History Press, ISBN-13: 978-1609493240

If you happen to be from Detroit or, at least, Southeast Michigan, then the name “Jacobson’s” has a special resonance for you that no other luxury retailer has. My family and I would drive out to Grosse Pointe on special occasions to look round the place and, sometimes, even to buy something; one of my earliest memories was standing tip-toe to peer into the glass-and-wood cabinets at all of those wonderful Dinky diecast miniatures from far-away England that were the ultimate in collectable toys. When it went belly-up in 2002 it seemed as if something special had died, never to return or be replaced. And so it hasn’t.

So, when I saw Jacobson’s, I Miss It So!: The Story of a Michigan Fashion Institution by Bruce Allen Kopytek at my local library I checked it out to read up on this lost pillar of Michiganian lore. One of the first, shocking things I discovered was that Jacobson’s was not a Grosse Pointe exclusive retailer but was, in fact, one of a number of stores located throughout Michigan and Florida, along with stores located in other Midwestern States; the second, shocking thing I discovered was that the Grosse Pointe store wasn’t even the first location, that Jacobson’s got its start in Jackson, Michigan, home to one of the world’s largest prisons.

What Kopytek has managed in his book is to tell a concise but not-very-challenging history of this vanished retail pillar. He records its founding in Jackson, its acquisition by Nathan Rosenfeld and then follows with chapter after chapter of each and every store as it is founded and prospers. Not very heady stuff, and one would think that Jacobson’s was destined to succeed as each store is opened and operated under the benevolent guidance of Nathan and his Nathanisms (if I didn’t know better, I would have thought that the Grand Old Man was a relative of Kopytek’s, seeing as he is described as almost a secular saint).

Then again, Jacobson’s, I Miss It So! is not some kind of exposé, but rather a nostalgic look back at a store and an institution that many people still have fond memories of – yours truly, included. I’m sure the truth of Jacobson’s is not nearly so rose-colored and that it operated as many a retail operation has, both then and now. What we have instead is short chapter after short chapter of store after store, with some closing chapters in which the whole operation goes belly-up, seemingly overnight. Again, not an in-depth study, but rather an amusing and unchallenging look back at recent retail history and a much-beloved store that has shuffled off this mortal coil.

“The Great Gatsby”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

208 pages, Arcturus, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1839407581

Golly, what a swell book. No, really. I feel that, when one reviews a masterpiece of literature like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, they must give it a glowing review and praise it to the hilt, if only not to look like an utter philistine in the eyes of…everyone. But no, this is legit; I really liked this book and understand why it is an American literary classic. While a mere 208 pages and measuring a meagre 6.5” x 4.25”, Fitzgerald tells as complete a tale of extraordinary wealth, missed opportunities, crushing regret and melancholy remembrance as anyone could. While Gatsby has been on my radar for years, I only just now got around to reading it after having seen Baz Luhrmann’s lavish interpretation (a brilliant interpretation, I might add, having now become familiar with the source material; way to go, Baz).

The Great Gatsby is set on Long Island during the Jazz Age and is narrated in the first-person by Nick Carraway as he details his interactions with the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his obsession to reunite with his lost love, Daisy Fay Buchanan. The backstory, I find, is just as interesting as the novel, based as it is on Fitzgerald’s youthful romance with socialite Ginevra King and the riotous parties he attended on Long Island’s North Shore in 1922 (when the novel is set). Following a move to the French Riviera, Fitzgerald completed a rough draft in 1924 and submitted it to editor Maxwell Perkins, who persuaded Fitzgerald to revise the work; after said revisions, Fitzgerald was at last satisfied (but remained ambivalent about the title); interestingly, Francis Cugat’s cover art greatly impressed Fitzgerald and he incorporated aspects of it into the novel.

In the century since its publication, The Great Gatsby has been subject to all sorts of interpretations as to its Profound Message and Hidden Meanings – Antisemitism, Battle of the Sexes, Class Differences, Identity, Race (of course), Sexuality (again, of course), Technology and so on – most of which I believe are caca…except for the most obvious one, the one that Fitzgerald intended: disillusionment with the American Dream during the Jazz Age (a term Fitzgerald claimed to have coined). In a nutshell, the American Dream states that every individual, regardless of their origins, may seek and achieve their desired goals in the Land of Opportunity. Under Fitzgerald’s pen, however, there is precious little optimism that this will, in fact, happen, not only for Gatsby, Nick and others in their circle, but for those down the economic scale, especially the Wilsons.

Fitzgerald posits that the “hero” of his tale, Jay Gatsby – or rather, James Gatz – is in fact a false prophet of the American Dream, showing through his life that those who pursue it often fail and, as a result, live lives of dissatisfaction due to its ultimate unattainability. This is illustrated in The Great Gatsby by the green light on the Buchanan’s dock, visible in East Egg from Gatsby’s house in the less-fashionable West Egg, serving as it does as Gatsby’s unrealizable goal to win Daisy who is, to our protagonist, the living embodiment of the American Dream. This is also relevant in that Gatsby is, in fact, not the successful businessman he poses as: while he worked hard and honestly under Dan Cody, he lost his rightful inheritance to Cody’s ex-wife, forcing Gatsby to become a bootlegger and earn his wealth through nefarious means.

The Great Gatsby takes place in 1922, with the Great War won and disillusionment over the same firmly in place in America and elsewhere, what with the awesome decadence and vast wealth, shown through the lavish parties Gatsby throws week after week. In addition to the very rich – Gatsby, Tom and Daisy Buchanan and even Jordan Baker – we meet the very poor in the form of George and Myrtle Wilson (who is also Tom Buchanan’s mistress). We learn that Gatsby courted Daisy before the war but couldn’t win her dues to his pennilessness, that she married Tom while Gatsby was still in Oxford but that, through his unceasing efforts, rekindles their affair and tries mightily to win back his lady love – to achieve the American Dream through hard work and dedication, as it were, like we’re all supposed to.

But all for naught: while Daisy is tempted to leave her husband for the man she once loved, she never does; Tom Buchanan’s powers of persuasion keep his wife firmly by his side, and Gatsby can only sputter at his failure after having come so close – that damn green light was almost in his hands at last. And then, everything really falls apart: Myrtle Wilson is killed when, after Gatsby and Daisy leave the Plaza hotel together, Daisy runs her husband’s mistress down and leaves the scene, although all and sundry believe that Gatsby is responsible for the deadly hit-and-run (they were, after all, driving his car). Gatsby is ultimately murdered by George Wilson and is buried, mostly unmourned and unremembered by the legions who attended his parties and never asked who gave them or why he bothered.

And that’s it. In a mere 208 pages F. Scott Fitzgerald skewers the era he lived in and punctures the myths that Americans told about themselves. I, as you can well imagine, find his disdain for the American Dream to be just a little overwrought, seeing as his sight was fixed firmly on the upper classes and the grasping throngs who sought to catch their coattails. This is, after all, a big country filled with millions who do not see success as what you own or who you strive to be, but on other small-scale victories, like living your life without hurting anyone, or building a modest fortune that ensures the survival of those you love rather to impress total strangers with all the stuff you own. But all of this was not what Fitzgerald was focused on; his was a critique of the Great and the Good of the upper classes who were not so great or good.

But there can be no doubt that Fitzgerald painted a portrait of his time that resonates across the ages, which is rather tragic considering that, when he died in 1940, he believed himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. Good God, what a failure.

“Von Bek”, by Michael Moorcock

 

600 pages, White Wolf Publishing, ISBN-13: 978-1565041929

Over the course of the mid-to-late 90s, White Wolf Publishing produced this massive omnibus collection of Michael Moorcock’s “Eternal Champion” stories, a recurrent aspect in many of his tales. Von Bek was the second in this series featuring the character Captain Graf Ulrich von Bek and includes the tales The War Hound and the World’s Pain, A City in the Autumn Stars, The Dragon in the Sword and The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius. Ulrich von Bek (and his descendants) are an unusual family in Moorcock’s Multiverse, as they function both as an aspects of his Eternal Champion and as a companions to him. While the von Beks are referred to as “the oldest blood in Germany”, due to the interdimensional origins of the family they are, in fact, of royal Melnibonéan blood and, as such, are also prone to albinism. Oh, and besides all that, the von Beks are the hereditary Keepers of the Holy Grail, charged to keep it safe until such a time as Lucifer is reconciled with God. This can only happen when Lucifer and the von Beks are able to cure the “World’s Pain”; for this reason, their ancient family motto is “Do you the Devil’s work”.

The von Beks are some of Moorcock’s more typical antiheroes, although they were created several years before his ultimate antihero, Elric of Melniboné. I say “von Beks” for, again unusual for Moorcock, this aspect doesn’t necessarily manifest the same way twice: and so we have Graf Ulrich Von Bek (17^th Century), Manfred Von Bek (18^th Century), Ulrich Von Bek (20^th Century), another Ulric Von Bek (again from the 20^th Century, and an avatar of Elric), Count Ulrich Rudric Renark Otto von Bek-Krasny (aka Count Zenith the Albino, and another avatar of Elric), Renark Von Bek (the far future), The Rose Von Bek (related via marriage to a certain Edwin Begg) and several more, besides.

The War Hound and the World’s Pain is the first of the novels that feature one of the many “von Beks”, aspects of the Eternal Champion. Captain Graf Ulrich von Bek is a scholarly 17^th Century German aristocrat who, haunted by his participation in “Magdeburg’s Wedding” – the Sack of Magdeburg between May 20^th and 24^th, 1631 – has become an independent mercenary. Over the course of his travels, he comes upon a castle on a mountain in a forest evidently devoid of life, where he rests and recuperates. Eventually, von Bek meets the owner of the castle, who is none other than Lucifer, but a sympathetic Lucifer unfamiliar to most, as he is pained by a silent God whose purpose for the world can no longer be easily discerned. Moorcock’s Satan is a philosophical chap who, far from being the foe of God and his creation, in fact seeks to cure humanity of its suffering by retrieving the Holy Grail; he also assures von Bek that he is among the damned, but offers him a possibility of salvation: after Satan gives von Bek a tour of an admittedly grim but not too-bad Hell – and after Satan offers to redeem his lover, Sabrina – von Bek undertakes to find the Holy Grail and heal the world’s pain. This is perhaps my favorite of Moorcock’s works, merging as he does historic events and metaphysical themes, although his interpretation of Satan, I’m sure, will ruffle Christian feathers. It’s also deep; I mean, the themes and interpretations almost require an advanced degree in German philosophy to disentangle but, I promise, if you stick with it, the payoff is well worthwhile.

The City in the Autumn Stars is the second of the von Bek books, in which Ritter Manfred von Bek, fleeing Paris and the French Revolution, heads to the fictional Mirenburg, Germany. After various encounters with a multitude of characters – none of whom are very reasonable to this man from the Age of Reason – von Bek must admit at long last that the world does not change, especially after losing the enchanting Libussa, Duchess of Crete, and the mysterious Holy Grail. As with The War Hound and the World’s Pain, there are deep political and philosophical debates featuring the meaning and purpose of revolutions, the abuse of power in the name of “progress” and the human need to dominate the natural world. When asked about the results of the French Revolution, the late premier Zhou Enlai is reputed to have said “Too early to say”. While doubts have been thrown upon this quote, the point is the same: ironically, the further Moorcock transports us from our own times into The City in the Autumn Stars the closer he brings us to the present and compels us, with his usual symbolic finesse, to realize that the problems of the failed French Revolution are still with us.

The Dragon in the Sword is the third von Bek book, only this von Bek is the companion to the protagonist, rather than the subject of the book. Once again, the Eternal Champion is called forth to right interdimensional wrongs. John Dakar, who became Erekosë, is this time Prince Flamadin, who desires only to be reunited with Ermizhad, his long-lost love. Instead, he is pulled into the dimension of the Six Realms where he meets one Ulrich von Bek, who has likewise found himself in this strange otherworldly realm, having escaped from the Nazis on Earth. The Six Realms are an area where six different worlds inhabited by very different cultures and races come together through a number of planar gates. Flamadin soon learns of a plot by the forces of Chaos to conquer all the realms and knows that it is his mission as the Eternal Champion to stop that from happening. This is not because of some love for the forces of Law but rather, as is a common theme in Moorcock’s Eternal Champion works, because Balance is all important: too much Chaos breeds anarchy, while too much Law breeds stagnation.

Lastly is a short story, The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius, which takes place in an alternate 1940s Germany where WWII never happened and Adolf Hitler is an officer in the German police force under the command of an aged Otto Von Bismarck. Metatemporal detective Ulrich Von Bek must solve the mystery of a murder surrounding intelligent plants and a strange gardener in a tale that, frankly, while an interesting bit of alternative fiction, didn’t live up to the premise.

“The Crucible”, by Arthur Miller

95 pages, Dramatists Play Service, Inc., ISBN-13: 978-0822202554

Alright, alright, alright, settle down, you; I know that, officially, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a play and not explicitly a book, but I’ve never seen the play but I have read it in the form of a book, so, y’know, it counts, okay? Okay. Alright, then. Like many of you, I’m sure, I read The Crucible in a high school English class and was exposed to its message about intolerance and hysteria, highlighting especially how both can lead to one being illogical and inhumane towards people Not Like Us. In the play, people lose their freedom and lives because they do not conform to norms and because people are swept away by fear and anxiety. Ostensibly, The Crucible dramatized and partially fictionalized the story of the Salem Witch Trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93, but in reality it was a critique of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) hearings then chaired by Senator Joseph McCarthy, and served as a none-too-subtle criticism of the same.

Well then, what to make of this thing? There can be no doubt that Miller’s masterpiece is a powerful counterblast to what he saw as the draconian and dangerous Congressional hearings that sought to expose and root-out Communists from the Federal Government, something that Miller and all the other East Coast Intellectuals were certain didn’t exist. Never mind that McCarthy was right, that all sorts of pinkos had indeed infiltrated our institutions and were working to undermine their own country in service to the Red Beast of Moscow (looking especially at you, Alger Hiss). But just as bad is the distortion of fact that Miller undertook as stated by the man himself in the autobiographical, Time Bends, when his play first premiered in New York:

 

What I had not quite bargained for…was the hostility in the New York audience as the theme of the play was revealed; an invisible sheet of ice formed over their heads, thick enough to skate on. In the lobby at the end, people with whom I had some fairly close professional acquaintanceships passed me by as though I were invisible…Business inevitably began falling off in a month or so.

Perhaps your audience, Art, knew of the 20 to 40 million or so souls who had perished trying to give birth to the New Soviet Man, seized from their families, imprisoned without cause, tortured into making blatantly false confessions before being subjected to a show trial the outcome of which was preordained by the Powers That Be. How many of our Woke darlings learn any of this in their leftist PoliSci classes? If I were King of the World one of my many decrees would be that anyone would be free to read The Crucible only on condition that they also read Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and/or anything by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Or maybe they should just sit through a screening of On the Waterfront, instead.

Because the play is a useful political tool to silence all critics and prevent what our founding fathers called eternal vigilance in protection of constitutional government. Miller not only slandered the Puritans, he went on to wrap himself in John Proctor’s saintly mantle, as well, and proceeded to make millions and transform himself into a martyr for The Cause. Miller and the Best & Brightest detested HUAC because it exposed their holier-than-thou bullshit to the world, and his hit piece is, for many, the last word on the subject. Mores the pity, for this play tells only that part of the story its author wants you to hear while covering up those icky bits that blows a hole in his narrative. In other words, The Crucible is nothing more than well-written lefty propaganda.