Umbria

Again, for the umteenth time.

"I may be dead next month. The moon may have crashed into the earth. Who knows what dreadful things might have come to pass. But, at the moment, I'm happy. What else matters?"

"Carpe diem."

"You know, I'm never really sure what that means."

"Seize the day; embrace the present; enjoy life, while you've got the chance."

"Carpe diem. I'll remember that."

Try: http://thecia.com.au/reviews/m/my-house-in-umbria.shtml

American women

Quite favorably discussed in the 17 December 2009 issue of the New York Review of Books by Cathleen Schine

A Nasty Way With Words

Poisoned Pens. Edited by Gary Dexter. 2009.

Portly G.K. Chesterton once remarked to the exiguous George Bernard Shaw: "To look at you, anyone would think there was a famine in England." To which Shaw replied: "To look at you, anyone would think you caused it."


A monstrous snob, Vladimir Nabokov criticized Fyodor Dostoevsky for his "lack of taste." H. Rider Haggard, the author of "King Solomon's Mines," denounced Anthony Trollope (whom he met in South Africa) for being "obstinate as a pig" and filled with "peculiar ideas."

For sheer schadenfreude "Poisoned Pens" is a book that one can pick up and put down anywhere. There are some notable gaps in the collection. We see nothing of H.L. Mencken. (The focus is mainly British.) Neither is mention made of Baron Corvo, one of literature's most contumacious practitioners, a man who lived to dish and to vilify. Nor are we are treated to anything from the late Truman Capote—"That's not writing," so went his famous remark on Jack Kerouac, "that's typing"—who could have taken up a whole chapter by himself.

The nastiness is amazing. Do buy copies of "Poisoned Pens" for your curmudgeonly friends. It is a perfect Christmas book for those seeking to stem the glut of good will.

Sleuth

Usually I do not like to compare films, but let each stand on its own merits, but, I do feel compelled to say, this original version is superior to the 2007 version.

I liked the 2007 film, with Michale Kane playing Andrew Wyke, the role Laurence Olivier played in the 1972 film; Caine played Milo Tindle in 1972. Jude Law played Mile Tindle in the 2007 version. All the acting is quite good; Olivier was superb, Caine better in 1972 than in 2007, and Law was excellent.

New books

Witold Gombrowicz,
New book: Pornografia (He died in 1969)

None 1 2 3 4 5

There Is No Freedom Without Bread!: 1989 and the Civil War That Brought Down ...‎

Constantine Pleshakov - History - 2009 - 304 pages - No preview available

None 1 2 3 4 5

In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles‎ Chris Welles Feder - Biography & Autobiography - 2009 - 304 pages

Thucydides : the reinvention of history

Books That Evoke Time and Place

November 7, 2009 - Penelope Lively says these books excel in depicting a particular time and place

1. The Boys' Crusade. By Paul Fussell. Modern Library, 2003 940.5421 F

In 1944, during the run-up to D-Day, two million young American men were given 17 weeks of basic training and shipped to Europe. Over the course of 11 months, from the Normandy landings to Germany's surrender, 135,000 U.S. infantrymen were killed and half a million wounded. Paul Fussell was among the soldiers who came home. He offers a brief, selective and forceful account of that period in "The Boys' Crusade"— and boys is what they largely were. The jacket of my copy shows the face of what one can only see as a child, swamped by his helmet. The book makes liberal use of eye-witness quotation—one soldier describes finding German corpses, "gray teeth, gray hands, worn boots, no identities . . . dead meat, nothing to grieve," and being "stupefied by the death we'd breathed"—an effect that plunges the reader into specific actions and the day-by-day routines of combat. But "The Boys' Crusade" also evokes the outlook of those teenagers—their blithe fidelity to the idea of America as the best and only modern country in the world, and their rapid exposure to the grim realities of an annihilating war.

2. The Last September. By Elizabeth Bowen. The Dial Press, 1929. FIC Bowen

This early novel by Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) is set in September 1920, at one of the "great houses" of the Anglo-Irish landowning Protestant families in southern Ireland. The central figure is Lois, a teenager staying on the estate, called Danielstown, with her aunt and uncle. There are tennis parties and dances—Lois loves a British officer from the nearby army station. But behind the story of this happy, innocent girl lurks another one: Ireland is in the midst of violent turmoil—guerrilla conflict between Irish rebels and the British troops who garrison the land. There are ambushes, reprisals, figures glimpsed in the darkness, rumors of arms caches. None of this is made explicit; instead, it surfaces in hints and clues that disturb the autumn program of social events. Until, at the end, there is the stark account of what came soon after: "A fearful scarlet ate up the hard spring darkness."

3. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. By James Shapiro. HarperCollins, 2005 822.33 Shakespeare S

James Shapiro places Shakespeare and his plays in their historical context, demonstrating how a yearlong burst of creative activity in 1599—"Henry V," "Julius Caesar," "As You Like It," the first draft of "Hamlet"—was prompted and fueled by what was actually happening at the time. England was threatened by Spain and its armada (possibly inspiring the "jittery soldiers" early in "Hamlet"), for instance, and Queen Elizabeth's favorite, the Earl of Essex, was pursuing a disastrous campaign to put down an Irish insurrection ("Henry V" mentions a general "from Ireland coming, / Bring rebellion broached on his sword"). The aging Elizabeth, with no successor waiting, feared assassination; "Julius Caesar" depicted the murder of a ruler. By finding public concerns reflected in the plays that Shakespeare was writing, Shapiro cunningly carries readers back to a single year and shows an extraordinary mind at work.

4. The Common Stream. By Rowland Parker. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1975. 942.0657 P

Rowland Parker's publication of "The Common Stream" more than three decades ago was a pioneering instance of what is now known as micro-history. Parker was not a professional historian; he lived in the village of Foxton in eastern England and became fascinated by the visible presence of the past all around him. He walked, dug, ferreted in archives and eventually produced this remarkable reconstruction of how people had lived in one small part of the world for 2,000 years. The presence of water determined the beginnings of settlement, hence "the common stream" of the book's title. National events intruded on Foxton: A Roman villa was burned down by what we would now call insurgents; the Black Death devastated the area; the English Civil War made partisan demands on the populace. But the village's story is of persons and of families—individual homes traced, their furnishings deduced from the content of wills. In Parker's telling, Foxton springs to life, century by century.

5. The Shorter Pepys. By Samuel Pepys. Penguin Classics, 1993. Biography B Pepys

"Up, and to the office . . ." So far, so 21st century, but Samuel Pepys's office was of course that of the British Navy Board in the 1660s. His expansive, vivid diaries, published in several editions since they first appeared in 1825, are one of the most immediate and valuable accounts that we have of the habits and outlook of the mid-17th century, let alone the habits and outlook of a remarkable man. Pepys was clever, ambitious and wonderfully indiscreet. At one extreme, the diaries are an insight into the operation of the British navy and the labyrinthine politics of the times; at the other, they are a funny and candid portrait of Pepys's own family life, his incessant pursuit of women, his fractious relationship with his young wife. They also provide close-up accounts of the Fire of London and the Great Plague, presenting as well an enthralling picture of what it was like to live through it all as a privileged Londoner.

—Ms. Lively is the author of "Moon Tiger" and other novels. Her latest, "Family Album," has just been published by Viking.

Sarafina!

Still not easy to watch, all these years later. 1992 film. Well done.

Bluffing at the Highest Levels

When Harry S. Truman was sworn in to office, his poker buddies from the previous war were afraid he might stop playing now that he had been "promoted." They need not have worried. The new chief executive even requisitioned a set of chips embossed with the presidential seal for use in the White House, though he tried to avoid being photographed gambling on its premises. The prudes of America would put up with only so much.

Truman had learned to play cards from his aunt Ida and uncle Harry on their Missouri farm back in the 1890s. In a letter to Bess Wallace, the woman he was courting, in February 1911, the sincere 26-year-old suitor wrote, "I like to play cards and dance . . . and go to shows and do all the things [religious people] say I shouldn't, but I don't feel badly about it."









Truman's preference for poker over fussier country-club pastimes helps explain the temperament of "Give 'Em Hell Harry" during American labor disputes, hot wars with Japan and North Korea, and the cold war with Russia and China.







Throughout his 88 years, Truman used poker as both a personal and political means of expression. His motto, "The buck stops here," refers to the dealer's button or placeholder, because during the 19th century hunting knives with buckhorn handles often served that function. It was the president's folksy way of letting Americans know he was responsible for what happened on his watch.








James McManus is the author of "Positively Fifth Street." This essay is adapted from "Cowboys Full," recently published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Precious

Sapphire. (1996). Push: a novel. New York : Alfred A. Knopf.



This novel is now the basis for a film.








Precious: Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire, with Gabourey Sidibe in the title role, opens Friday in selected cities.













Gabourey Sidibe (left) and Mo'Nique (right) star in the new movie 'Precious.'

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Juan Williams, himself black, does not think highly of the movie or the book on which it is based:

The black imagination as revealed in gangster lit is centered on the world of drug dealers— "dough boys" who are heavy with drug money—and the get-rich-quick rappers and athletes who mimic the druggie lifestyle. And there are lots of "ghetto-fabulous" women, referring to themselves as bitches, carrying brand-name handbags and wearing big, gaudy jewelry. Attitude and anger are everything. The dispiriting word "nigger" is used freely by black characters talking about one another. There are guns and drive-by murders; hot sex that emphasizes the pleasure of getting it on with no strings attached; women without husbands and children without fathers; people who brag about being street-smart and then drop out of school and find themselves unemployed.

"Precious" is already a cultural event, then, whatever its box-office success turns out to be. The movie gives prominence to the subculture of gangster-lit novels, bringing them into the mainstream. Not only the best but the worst that can be said about these books is they are an authentic literary product of 21st-century black America. They are poorly written, poorly edited and celebrate the worst of black life.

Designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The Times.


Joe Morgenstern reviewed it well in the Journal.

One of the most telling moments of a shockingly beautiful film called "Precious" comes toward the end, and it's hardly more than a throwaway—the heroine glances at a mirror and sees herself. Until then mirrors have reflected her desperate fantasies of who she might be—a svelte blonde, a bejeweled black dancer or cover girl. That's because Claireece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) has found the sight of her physical self—like the plight of her spiritual self—unendurable. A 16-year-old African-American in the Harlem of 1987, she is mountainously obese, sexually and psychically abused, illiterate, almost mute and pregnant with her second child. The drama begins by giving her spirit voice—it's another notion of "A Beautiful Mind"—and follows her growth from a rageful child with a turbulent inner life to a formidable young woman with a life full of promise and hope.

The full, contractual title of the film, which was directed by Lee Daniels, is "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire." (Geoffrey Fletcher did the screen adaptation.) In addition to striking a blow for books and the written word, the title serves as a reminder that "Precious" is a work of fiction, by the African-American poet who calls herself Sapphire, and something of a fantasy in its own right—an inspirational fable about the power of kindness and caring. (The producers include Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry.)

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George Clooney, below, is one of the stars of 'The Men Who Stare at Goats.'
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That's not to diminish the fable's value, only to note the near-saintly devotion of an alternative-school teacher, Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), and a social worker, Ms. Weiss (Mariah Carey), and to acknowledge the time-lapse pace of the heroine's blossoming under their care. "Precious" is genuinely and irresistibly inspirational. If the filmmaking weren't so skillful and the acting weren't so consistently brilliant, you might mistake this production for a raw slice of life from a Third World country where movies can still be instruments of moral instruction and social change.

If Ms. Sidibe weren't playing the title role, it's hard to imagine what "Precious" would be. She doesn't play it, she invades and conquers it with concentrated energy and blithe humor. (Referring to the sophisticated Ms. Rain and her lesbian partner, Precious says, "They talk like a TV channel I don't watch.") And she's not the only spectacular attraction. The comedienne and actress Mo'Nique is stunningly effective as the heroine's monstrous mother, Mary, who makes a mockery of maternal instincts and comes undone in a ghastly confrontation that goes a long way toward explaining her monstrosity. This is a fine movie, and a deep one. It's about unearthing buried treasure.

Googled

Auletta, Ken. (2009). Googled: the end of the world as we know it. New York : Penguin Press.







In "Googled," New Yorker writer Ken Auletta tells the familiar story of the company's rapid transformation from Silicon Valley start-up to global corporation. As expected, we hear about the young Rollerblading employees at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, with its massage rooms, pool tables and free meals. But thanks to the unusual degree of access that the company granted the author—and thanks to his sharp eye—"Googled" also presents interesting new details. The book describes, for instance, Google's close relationship with former Vice President Al Gore—during a meeting with him, back in his hirsute phase after leaving office, Google executives showed their solidarity by donning fake beards.

Many companies and people are worried abouit the behemoth that is this company.


In contrast to all this corporate anxiety, consumers so far have been upbeat about the extraordinary power that Google wields. As Mr. Brin explains, Google's importance in people's lives comes from "determining what information they get to look at." Lawrence Lessig, who was an expert in the Microsoft antitrust case (and is now a professor at Harvard Law School), tells Mr. Auletta that Google will soon be more powerful than Microsoft ever was, since primacy in search gives the company unprecedented control over commerce and content.

Determining is a powerful word.

Google's favor turned Wikipedia into the world's leading reference source, but a few algorithm tweaks would easily send that torrent of traffic elsewhere. Mr. Lessig says that, for the moment, we take comfort from the fact that Google has been led by "good guys." But then he asks: "Why do we expect them to be good guys from now until the end of time?"

A tweak in the algorithm made Wikipedia be the top result in many searches.

Mr. Auletta notes that many successful companies have appeared "impregnable"—until they didn't. IBM once had a 70% share of the massive mainframe computer market. Then came antitrust action and the personal computer. A company expanding into as many arenas as Google is will almost certainly "wake up the bears," as Verizon Chairman and CEO Ivan Seidenberg puts it.

Problems for Google might lie beyond the horizon, but the immediate future promises more success: Google is well-positioned for the transition to "cloud computing," where software and data are stored online rather than on personal computers. Mr. Schmidt says that cloud computing will be "the defining technological shift of our generation." Accordingly, Google's greatest value creation probably still lies ahead.

Denialism

Specter, Michael. (2009). Denialism: how irrational thinking hinders scientific progress, harms the planet, and threatens our lives. New York: Penguin Press.

Excerpt: ‘Denialism’

“I always say that electricity is a fantastic invention,” the British economist Michael Lipton once told Michael Specter, whose bristling new book, “Denialism,” explores the dangerous ways in which scientific progress can be misunderstood. “But if the first two products had been the electric chair and the cattle prod,” Mr. Lipton continued, “I doubt that most consumers would have seen the point.”

The term “denialism,” used by Mr. Specter as an all-purpose, pop-sci buzzword, is defined by him as what happens “when an entire segment of society, often struggling with the trauma of change, turns away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie.”

Creationism a prime example.

And whatever the merits of organic farming for societies that can afford it, what happens in places where food, land or water are scarce? There is a case to be made for agricultural methods that make the most efficient use of new technologies, and thus for genetically engineered crops that produce increased yields. But these are widely derided as Frankenfoods. Their ability to scare people and trigger blanket resistance is one of this book’s foremost illustrations of denialism in action.

It is people from societies with plenty that rail against genetically modified foods.

Start-up nation

Senor, Dan.(2009). Start-up nation: the story of Israel's economic miracle. New York : Twelve, 2009.

956.9405 S


Saw ad in today's Journal. HWPL, among other libraries, owns it.

From a Kirkus review, this phrase caught my eye: A pair of savvy policy wonks investigate how Israel has generated some notable economic wonders.In the face of the pervasive, virulent hostility of surrounding regimes, the young nation of Israel produces, per capita, more scientific papers than any other country. Amid frequent acts of terrorism, the Jewish state leads the world in percentage of GDP invested in research and development.