.
[This is posted on the Marine Corps Birthday 2010.]
.
I was starting to wonder: what is it with James Cameron and his ongoing respect for the US Marine Corps? He is native Canadian with no military experience, but he has written rather good portrayals of Marines in at least two of his great films. Then I find out that Cameron’s younger brother, David, was in the Corps, and James has the highest respect for Leathernecks (aka, Gyrenes, Jarheads).
.
Cameron was screenwriter/director for Aliens (1986), the second and perhaps best film in that series, and which had Colonial Marines of the future. Al Matthews, the actor that played the Colonial Marine sergeant in this film, was actually a Marine Vietnam War vet. So his dialogue to his Marines after they all come out of cryo-sleep came naturally, namely when he said:
.
“All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? … Another glorious day in the Corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm! Every meal’s a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I LOVE the Corps!”
.
Maybe it is Cameron’s temperament that also makes him feel akin to the Marines – Cameron is an infamous hard-ass on set who demands that things are done with complete perfection. I was particularly impressed with his treatment of Marines in the science fiction film Avatar (2009) in which he was the writer/director.
.
The protagonist of Avatar, Jake Sully, is a disabled veteran Recon Marine whose combat injuries confine him permanently to a wheelchair. He has a chance to join the Avatar Program on the planet Pandora only because an avatar driver’s body (a hybrid of a human mind inside a Pandoran-native humanoid Na’vi body) had been prepared from the DNA of his twin brother. His twin was a Program scientist who just died, and his avatar body had been prepared at great cost, so Jake’s genetic identity with his brother makes him uniquely able to use it. And in an avatar body Jake will be able to walk again. So he is a misplaced warrior thrown into a science program, and yet the wild and dangerous world of Pandora might demand such a warrior spirit.
.
When in his human body in the wheelchair, Jake always wears a T-shirt with the USMC’s Eagle, Globe and Anchor emblem. He’s proud. In an early voice-over narrative monologue that defines who he is, he says: “There’s no such thing as an ex-Marine; you may be out, but you never lose the attitude.” Ooh rah!
.
When Jake, in his avatar Na’vi body, is brought before the Na’vi tribal leaders, they ask him what he was before as a human, if he was not a scientist. He replies with pride, “I was a Marine,” and then, to further explain this concept to them, he continues, “a … uh … a warrior … of the Jarhead clan.” That was the moment I became a really big fan of James Cameron’s writing.
.
The villain, Col. Quaritch, is Security Director of the Pandora mining operation, heading what is really a mercenary force of tough guys. He is also a veteran Recon Marine, and he is tougher than nails. His dialogue and delivery are priceless. (He is played perfectly by Stephen Lang, who played Stonewall Jackson in Gods and Generals, I thought Lang should have gotten an award for movie “villain of the year” for his performance in Avatar.)
.
Here in the real world of movie critics there has been some misplaced controversy about Cameron’s treatment of the USMC in Avatar, with many people thinking that he is making the Corps look bad through the former-Marine villains such as Col. Quaritch and many of his mercenary thugs. This argument goes thus: the actual USMC strategic doctrine for over a century has been to win over the “hearts and minds” of the indigenous people. To truly win them over. This strategic vision came from the Marine experience of always being a small force landed in hostile places a long way from home, and it evolved into the Small Wars Manual, the bible of counter-insurgency operations. (The Small Wars Manual has consistently been ignored by the Pentagon until it is too late.)
.
Critics of Cameron say that the official policy of villain Col. Quaritch – which is a hostile contempt for the indigenous Na’vi of Pandora – disrespects this USMC vision. But the critics completely miss the point. Hero Jake Sully fully redeems the story in two ways: First, he serves the just cause within this story’s context. Second, he actually is devoted to a Marine-like vision of understanding and working with the indigenous Na’vi. And as a Marine, Jake is solidly brave, wonderfully true, and always faithful.
.
Semper Fi. Enough said right there.
.
-Zenwind.
.
31 October 2010
Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon
.
“I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand,
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain.
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's,
Going to get a big dish of beef chow mein.
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
.
“If you hear him howling around your kitchen door,
Better not let him in.
Little old lady got mutilated late last night,
Werewolves of London again.
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
.
“He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent,
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair.
Better stay away from him,
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim.
I'd like to meet his tailor.
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
.
Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen,
Doing the werewolves of London.
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen,
Doing the werewolves of London.
I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's,
His hair was perfect.
Werewolves of London again.
Draw blood.
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London
Ahooww-Ooooh! …
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London
Ahooww-Ooooh! …
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London
Ahooww-Ooooh!”
.
-(Music and Lyrics by Warren Zevon)-
*
[This song was the radio song-of-the-week in May 1978 when I did a solo rock climb of Fritz Wiessner’s “Old Route” on the Upper Washbowl Ledge, Chapel Pond, Adirondacks, NY. It was a great high point in my early climbing development. High, wild, and throwing out all restraints. My theme song of that day. Ooh Rah! –Zenwind.]
.
“I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand,
Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain.
He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fook's,
Going to get a big dish of beef chow mein.
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
.
“If you hear him howling around your kitchen door,
Better not let him in.
Little old lady got mutilated late last night,
Werewolves of London again.
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
.
“He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent,
Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair.
Better stay away from him,
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim.
I'd like to meet his tailor.
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London.
Ahooww-Ooooh!
.
Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen,
Doing the werewolves of London.
I saw Lon Chaney, Jr. walking with the Queen,
Doing the werewolves of London.
I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's,
His hair was perfect.
Werewolves of London again.
Draw blood.
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London
Ahooww-Ooooh! …
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London
Ahooww-Ooooh! …
Ahooww-Ooooh! Werewolves of London
Ahooww-Ooooh!”
.
-(Music and Lyrics by Warren Zevon)-
*
[This song was the radio song-of-the-week in May 1978 when I did a solo rock climb of Fritz Wiessner’s “Old Route” on the Upper Washbowl Ledge, Chapel Pond, Adirondacks, NY. It was a great high point in my early climbing development. High, wild, and throwing out all restraints. My theme song of that day. Ooh Rah! –Zenwind.]
.
14 October 2010
Book Review: Mountains of the Mind: a history of a fascination, by Robert Macfarlane (2003)
.
Robert Macfarlane can really write. As expressed in its subtitle, Mountains of the Mind is a sort of history of the human fascination with mountains – and more. It is part history, part geography lesson and part literary survey, and there are great bits of lore on almost every page. He chronicles the changing ideas about mountains that led to people actually climbing them. He also intersperses the text with some of his own personal experiences in the mountains, which are eloquently written.
.
The first chapter is named “Possession,” and that says it all. Mountains do possess some of us. From his own youth, reading through his grandfather’s books, Macfarlane has been possessed, i.e., obsessed. The gory details of injury and death in the mountains are part of its romance. It is a familiar path: one reads the thrilling, and often tragic, stories of great mountaineers and expeditioners of the past and one gets caught up in the quest. Alpinists have often been very literate, and their writings are usually impossible to put down.
.
There is the great 1924 mystery of Mallory and Irvine, who were last seen climbing ever upward on a high ridge of Mt. Everest before the clouds obscured them from below. There are books on the great polar expeditions. There is John Hunt’s The Ascent of Everest (a personal milestone in my own young adventure reading), telling of the 1953 ascent by Hillary and Tenzing. There is Edward Whymper’s Scrambles Amongst the Alps, with graphic illustrations by Whymper. Then there is Maurice Herzog’s Annapurna.
.
Herzog’s account of the French 1950 ascent of Annapurna, the first-ever ascent of any Himalayan peak over 8,000 meters, is a mountaineering classic that possessed me as it did Macfarlane. It was a tipping point into obsession for both of us. Herzog and Louis Lachenal set off on a cold, clear morning from the highest camp for Annapurna’s summit. As Macfarlane paraphrases, “Quite soon it became apparent that they would have to turn back or run the risk of severe frostbite. They carried on.” (p.7) Herzog lost all his fingers and toes to frostbite, but they reached the summit and lived to tell about it. (My own 1976 experience – see “The Frostbite Trip” – was a painful one of freezing my toes and thinking I would die, but still carrying on and up, a decision I have never regretted.)
.
Chapter Two is “The Great Stone Book” and tells of Europeans first treating mountains as objects worthy of study, with the new science of geology slowly giving birth to concepts of “deep time.” The early geologist, Scotsman James Hutton, ended his Theory of the Earth (late 1790s) with this: “The result therefore of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning, – and no prospect of an end.” This was a mind-stretching concept, and the Romantic poets and painters became possessed by mountains and wilderness.
.
Chapter Three is “The Pursuit of Fear” and discusses attitudes toward risk, death, the 1865 Matterhorn disaster, etc. Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a recklessly addictive personality, took up what he called “a new sort of Gambling” – addiction to heights. He would climb a rocky peak and then pick a blindly arbitrary descent route, knowing that down-climbing is much harder than ascent. In 1802 he found himself stuck on a ledge in England’s Peak District with a storm coming in. He obviously lived to tell of it, but he was lucky.
.
The great English climber Alfred Mummery was an early advocate of solo climbing, and he died in 1895 in one of the first attempts to climb an 8,000 meter peak, Nanga Parbat, with a small climbing party. Nietzsche wrote of the “discipline of suffering – of great suffering” being what has “produced all the elevation of humanity hitherto,” and that “This hardness is requisite for every mountain-climber.”
.
In 1865 the Matterhorn was first ascended by Edward Whymper in a party of seven, several of whom should not have been on the hill. All seven were tied into one hemp rope, the common practice at that time. Descending after victory, the most inexperienced man slipped and dragged down three others, and these four fell thousands of feet down the North Face. Killed were a young English lord, a preacher, a Cambridge student and a Swiss guide. Whymper and two others only lived because the rope broke. The reaction in England was hysteric, with outcries that mountaineering was lunacy and “a depraved taste.” Maybe so, but we climb.
.
Chapter Four is “Glaciers and Ice: the streams of time.” Geology came to the idea of a great Ice Age in the past, of a once-frozen Earth as well as a possibility of a return in the future of “icy death.” 1816 was “the year without a summer,” a disastrous cold spell caused by volcanic ash in the atmosphere, and it caused poets such as Byron and Shelley to contemplate this with dread. Later, the wider spread of the idea of ice ages changed not only science but the popular way of looking at landscapes.
.
(My hometown in northern Pennsylvania has a classic U-shaped valley cutting through the hills to the south, caused by huge glaciers of the last ice sheet advancing overhead. I pointed this out and explained it to my Thai wife – who had never until that April been out of the Tropics – and she laughed at me, convinced that I was telling an outrageous jest. I did not press the issue since it was not a concept that she would easily assimilate, and, after all, it really is a mind-blower.)
.
Chapter Five is “Altitude: the summit and the view.” In 1786 Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, was climbed by two Frenchmen, Paccard and Balmat. By the end of the Eighteenth century, Macfarlane writes, “Summit fever was catching.”
.
In 1818 the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich painted Wanderer Above a Sea of Clouds. Macfarlane writes that this Friedrich painting “became, and has remained, the archetypical image of the mountain-climbing visionary, a figure ubiquitous in Romantic art.” He continues, saying that “…as a crystallization of a concept – that standing atop a mountain is to be admired, that it confers nobility on a person – Friedrich’s painting has carried enormous symbolic power down the years in terms of Western self-perception.” (p.157)
.
For artists and poets of that day, such as Friedrich, Keats and Shelley, “[altitude] coincided perfectly with the Romantic glorification of the individual. … The mountain-top also provided an icon for the Romantic ideal of liberty: what could more obviously embody freedom and openness?” (pp.158-9). Height now “equaled escape, it equaled solitude, it equaled spiritual and artistic epiphany.” (p.160)
.
Chapter Six is called “Walking Off the Map,” and it recounts the joys and rigors of exploring new mountain ranges. It makes me want to put on my boots and go.
.
Chapter Seven is “A New Heaven and a New Earth.” Macfarlane mentions an experience that I have often had: of returning to the lowland civilization after being awhile in the mountains and finding it to be a disorienting episode, solitary and incommunicable. One feels like an exile returning home after long years abroad, “bearing experiences beyond speech.” (p.204)
.
Chapter Eight is “Everest,” and tells of George Mallory’s fatal obsession with that mountain through his letters and other writings. (“Why?” “Because it’s there.”)
.
Chapter Nine is a short final chapter, “The Snow Hare,” and it sums up many of the threads earlier in the book. Macfarlane tells of meeting a snow hare briefly on a winter mountaintop in Scotland in a completely blinding snowstorm. This solitary encounter, a crossing of paths, sums up for him the feeling of “wonder” found on mountains.
.
“The solitude I had [earlier] experienced in the whiteout on the ridge had been replaced by a sense of distance invisibly before me. I no longer felt cocooned by the falling snow, I felt accommodated by it, extended by it – part of the hundreds of miles of landscape over which the snow was falling. … I thought of the snow falling across ridge on ridge of the invisible hills, and I thought too that there was nowhere at that moment I would rather be.” (p.278)
.
I have never been on that specific mountain, but I know exactly what he means.
.
-Zenwind.
.
Robert Macfarlane can really write. As expressed in its subtitle, Mountains of the Mind is a sort of history of the human fascination with mountains – and more. It is part history, part geography lesson and part literary survey, and there are great bits of lore on almost every page. He chronicles the changing ideas about mountains that led to people actually climbing them. He also intersperses the text with some of his own personal experiences in the mountains, which are eloquently written.
.
The first chapter is named “Possession,” and that says it all. Mountains do possess some of us. From his own youth, reading through his grandfather’s books, Macfarlane has been possessed, i.e., obsessed. The gory details of injury and death in the mountains are part of its romance. It is a familiar path: one reads the thrilling, and often tragic, stories of great mountaineers and expeditioners of the past and one gets caught up in the quest. Alpinists have often been very literate, and their writings are usually impossible to put down.
.
There is the great 1924 mystery of Mallory and Irvine, who were last seen climbing ever upward on a high ridge of Mt. Everest before the clouds obscured them from below. There are books on the great polar expeditions. There is John Hunt’s The Ascent of Everest (a personal milestone in my own young adventure reading), telling of the 1953 ascent by Hillary and Tenzing. There is Edward Whymper’s Scrambles Amongst the Alps, with graphic illustrations by Whymper. Then there is Maurice Herzog’s Annapurna.
.
Herzog’s account of the French 1950 ascent of Annapurna, the first-ever ascent of any Himalayan peak over 8,000 meters, is a mountaineering classic that possessed me as it did Macfarlane. It was a tipping point into obsession for both of us. Herzog and Louis Lachenal set off on a cold, clear morning from the highest camp for Annapurna’s summit. As Macfarlane paraphrases, “Quite soon it became apparent that they would have to turn back or run the risk of severe frostbite. They carried on.” (p.7) Herzog lost all his fingers and toes to frostbite, but they reached the summit and lived to tell about it. (My own 1976 experience – see “The Frostbite Trip” – was a painful one of freezing my toes and thinking I would die, but still carrying on and up, a decision I have never regretted.)
.
Chapter Two is “The Great Stone Book” and tells of Europeans first treating mountains as objects worthy of study, with the new science of geology slowly giving birth to concepts of “deep time.” The early geologist, Scotsman James Hutton, ended his Theory of the Earth (late 1790s) with this: “The result therefore of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning, – and no prospect of an end.” This was a mind-stretching concept, and the Romantic poets and painters became possessed by mountains and wilderness.
.
Chapter Three is “The Pursuit of Fear” and discusses attitudes toward risk, death, the 1865 Matterhorn disaster, etc. Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a recklessly addictive personality, took up what he called “a new sort of Gambling” – addiction to heights. He would climb a rocky peak and then pick a blindly arbitrary descent route, knowing that down-climbing is much harder than ascent. In 1802 he found himself stuck on a ledge in England’s Peak District with a storm coming in. He obviously lived to tell of it, but he was lucky.
.
The great English climber Alfred Mummery was an early advocate of solo climbing, and he died in 1895 in one of the first attempts to climb an 8,000 meter peak, Nanga Parbat, with a small climbing party. Nietzsche wrote of the “discipline of suffering – of great suffering” being what has “produced all the elevation of humanity hitherto,” and that “This hardness is requisite for every mountain-climber.”
.
In 1865 the Matterhorn was first ascended by Edward Whymper in a party of seven, several of whom should not have been on the hill. All seven were tied into one hemp rope, the common practice at that time. Descending after victory, the most inexperienced man slipped and dragged down three others, and these four fell thousands of feet down the North Face. Killed were a young English lord, a preacher, a Cambridge student and a Swiss guide. Whymper and two others only lived because the rope broke. The reaction in England was hysteric, with outcries that mountaineering was lunacy and “a depraved taste.” Maybe so, but we climb.
.
Chapter Four is “Glaciers and Ice: the streams of time.” Geology came to the idea of a great Ice Age in the past, of a once-frozen Earth as well as a possibility of a return in the future of “icy death.” 1816 was “the year without a summer,” a disastrous cold spell caused by volcanic ash in the atmosphere, and it caused poets such as Byron and Shelley to contemplate this with dread. Later, the wider spread of the idea of ice ages changed not only science but the popular way of looking at landscapes.
.
(My hometown in northern Pennsylvania has a classic U-shaped valley cutting through the hills to the south, caused by huge glaciers of the last ice sheet advancing overhead. I pointed this out and explained it to my Thai wife – who had never until that April been out of the Tropics – and she laughed at me, convinced that I was telling an outrageous jest. I did not press the issue since it was not a concept that she would easily assimilate, and, after all, it really is a mind-blower.)
.
Chapter Five is “Altitude: the summit and the view.” In 1786 Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps, was climbed by two Frenchmen, Paccard and Balmat. By the end of the Eighteenth century, Macfarlane writes, “Summit fever was catching.”
.
In 1818 the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich painted Wanderer Above a Sea of Clouds. Macfarlane writes that this Friedrich painting “became, and has remained, the archetypical image of the mountain-climbing visionary, a figure ubiquitous in Romantic art.” He continues, saying that “…as a crystallization of a concept – that standing atop a mountain is to be admired, that it confers nobility on a person – Friedrich’s painting has carried enormous symbolic power down the years in terms of Western self-perception.” (p.157)
.
For artists and poets of that day, such as Friedrich, Keats and Shelley, “[altitude] coincided perfectly with the Romantic glorification of the individual. … The mountain-top also provided an icon for the Romantic ideal of liberty: what could more obviously embody freedom and openness?” (pp.158-9). Height now “equaled escape, it equaled solitude, it equaled spiritual and artistic epiphany.” (p.160)
.
Chapter Six is called “Walking Off the Map,” and it recounts the joys and rigors of exploring new mountain ranges. It makes me want to put on my boots and go.
.
Chapter Seven is “A New Heaven and a New Earth.” Macfarlane mentions an experience that I have often had: of returning to the lowland civilization after being awhile in the mountains and finding it to be a disorienting episode, solitary and incommunicable. One feels like an exile returning home after long years abroad, “bearing experiences beyond speech.” (p.204)
.
Chapter Eight is “Everest,” and tells of George Mallory’s fatal obsession with that mountain through his letters and other writings. (“Why?” “Because it’s there.”)
.
Chapter Nine is a short final chapter, “The Snow Hare,” and it sums up many of the threads earlier in the book. Macfarlane tells of meeting a snow hare briefly on a winter mountaintop in Scotland in a completely blinding snowstorm. This solitary encounter, a crossing of paths, sums up for him the feeling of “wonder” found on mountains.
.
“The solitude I had [earlier] experienced in the whiteout on the ridge had been replaced by a sense of distance invisibly before me. I no longer felt cocooned by the falling snow, I felt accommodated by it, extended by it – part of the hundreds of miles of landscape over which the snow was falling. … I thought of the snow falling across ridge on ridge of the invisible hills, and I thought too that there was nowhere at that moment I would rather be.” (p.278)
.
I have never been on that specific mountain, but I know exactly what he means.
.
-Zenwind.
.
03 August 2010
Book Review: The Terror, by Dan Simmons
.
The Terror (2007) is my favorite Dan Simmons novel and one of my favorite novels ever. (See earlier intro post about Simmons here.) This is historical fiction and horror. It is based on the historic lost Franklin Expedition, a British expedition of two ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, sent to look for the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic in 1845 under the command of Captain Sir John Franklin.
.
Historically, the two ships and all hands were lost without a trace except for the graves of three crewmen and a note left behind. It is still one of the great arctic mysteries. Simmons researched the case, as well as arctic exploration in that age, and then added his own imaginary spin to it. As we read, we experience the deep cold of the six-month arctic night as the ships are frozen into the icepack. Added to this is Eskimo mythology and the associated terrors of the Far North.
.
One reason that I like this book is because of its authentic descriptions of true cold. I have bivouacked out in the cold down to 40-below-zero but never in the amazing deeper cold experienced by these men. While I had lived outside at minus-40 for a week in 1970s gear, these guys had inadequate clothing and gear, and they were starving to death over a long, long time. It gives you the shivers, and this might be a good book to read on oppressively hot summer days. If you read it during a long northern winter, it will take you into a long dark tunnel of terror.
.
I also like the main character, Captain Francis Crozier, historic captain of the HMS Terror and second-in-command of the expedition under Franklin. Crozier was an Irishman, and thus an outsider in the mainly English naval establishment. He was also a melancholic and a substance abuser – much like me in my younger military days.
.
Simmons also gives Crozier memories of alienation from his earliest days, of standing alone outside a village on a winter’s night, looking at the village lights but feeling completely estranged from his community. I had this same winter experience – many, many times while growing up – e.g., standing alone in a frozen pasture, or a wood lot, or on a snowy hilltop above my own native village after dark, watching the snowstorm against the town’s lights, feeling apart from all humanity. The character of Crozier really touched me, and my own experience of expatriate re-birth outside of my native culture makes me appreciate him and the destiny Simmons gives him even more.
.
The only previous literary background required to enrich the reading of this novel is just a minor familiarity with English philosopher Thomas Hobbes – and I can provide the context you need right here. The few references in the novel are more of an inside joke. Hobbes was an extreme pessimist and an advocate of completely authoritarian political rule. His most famous work was Leviathan (1651) in which he argued for an extremely strong government because human nature is perversely wild and dangerous.
.
Caveat: I do not agree with Hobbes about human nature, and I am completely opposite him in politics. I advocate little or no government while Hobbes wants absolutism.
.
One of Hobbes’ primary arguments is that the horrible religious warfare of his times was because of too much freedom of religion – too much choice – and that one absolute ruler or ruling group should dictate one religion for all to follow in order to stop the fighting between sects. (But I would say that, while a large amount of religious freedom did encourage the flowering of countless religious sects, it was precisely the mix of government power with religion that caused the insane wars within Christianity in Hobbes' day.)
.
When Crozier is assigned, against his inclination, to conduct a Sunday religious service on his ship, he announces that he will read from “The Book of Leviathan, Part One, Chapter Twelve,” and he reads from the very cynical Hobbes on historical religious flights of fancy from the most ancient of days. That whole episode is – to me – a philosophical joke, one of my favorite passages in the book.
.
In addition to the above, certainly the most famous quote of all from Hobbes’ Leviathan is that, without an absolute government to intimidate and control people, man’s life will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Keep that quote in mind, as it identifies Crozier's attitude before his redemption.
.
A final note on this book. I was reading it while waiting for supper at The Saxophone pub in Bangkok and listening to a good jazz band, and I came upon its description of a bonfire on the ice as a “Guy Fawkes Day above the Arctic Circle.” I checked my calendar, and indeed it was 5 November, Guy Fawkes Night, that very night. (“A penny for the old guy.”)
.
I love this book.
.
-Zenwind.
.
The Terror (2007) is my favorite Dan Simmons novel and one of my favorite novels ever. (See earlier intro post about Simmons here.) This is historical fiction and horror. It is based on the historic lost Franklin Expedition, a British expedition of two ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, sent to look for the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic in 1845 under the command of Captain Sir John Franklin.
.
Historically, the two ships and all hands were lost without a trace except for the graves of three crewmen and a note left behind. It is still one of the great arctic mysteries. Simmons researched the case, as well as arctic exploration in that age, and then added his own imaginary spin to it. As we read, we experience the deep cold of the six-month arctic night as the ships are frozen into the icepack. Added to this is Eskimo mythology and the associated terrors of the Far North.
.
One reason that I like this book is because of its authentic descriptions of true cold. I have bivouacked out in the cold down to 40-below-zero but never in the amazing deeper cold experienced by these men. While I had lived outside at minus-40 for a week in 1970s gear, these guys had inadequate clothing and gear, and they were starving to death over a long, long time. It gives you the shivers, and this might be a good book to read on oppressively hot summer days. If you read it during a long northern winter, it will take you into a long dark tunnel of terror.
.
I also like the main character, Captain Francis Crozier, historic captain of the HMS Terror and second-in-command of the expedition under Franklin. Crozier was an Irishman, and thus an outsider in the mainly English naval establishment. He was also a melancholic and a substance abuser – much like me in my younger military days.
.
Simmons also gives Crozier memories of alienation from his earliest days, of standing alone outside a village on a winter’s night, looking at the village lights but feeling completely estranged from his community. I had this same winter experience – many, many times while growing up – e.g., standing alone in a frozen pasture, or a wood lot, or on a snowy hilltop above my own native village after dark, watching the snowstorm against the town’s lights, feeling apart from all humanity. The character of Crozier really touched me, and my own experience of expatriate re-birth outside of my native culture makes me appreciate him and the destiny Simmons gives him even more.
.
The only previous literary background required to enrich the reading of this novel is just a minor familiarity with English philosopher Thomas Hobbes – and I can provide the context you need right here. The few references in the novel are more of an inside joke. Hobbes was an extreme pessimist and an advocate of completely authoritarian political rule. His most famous work was Leviathan (1651) in which he argued for an extremely strong government because human nature is perversely wild and dangerous.
.
Caveat: I do not agree with Hobbes about human nature, and I am completely opposite him in politics. I advocate little or no government while Hobbes wants absolutism.
.
One of Hobbes’ primary arguments is that the horrible religious warfare of his times was because of too much freedom of religion – too much choice – and that one absolute ruler or ruling group should dictate one religion for all to follow in order to stop the fighting between sects. (But I would say that, while a large amount of religious freedom did encourage the flowering of countless religious sects, it was precisely the mix of government power with religion that caused the insane wars within Christianity in Hobbes' day.)
.
When Crozier is assigned, against his inclination, to conduct a Sunday religious service on his ship, he announces that he will read from “The Book of Leviathan, Part One, Chapter Twelve,” and he reads from the very cynical Hobbes on historical religious flights of fancy from the most ancient of days. That whole episode is – to me – a philosophical joke, one of my favorite passages in the book.
.
In addition to the above, certainly the most famous quote of all from Hobbes’ Leviathan is that, without an absolute government to intimidate and control people, man’s life will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Keep that quote in mind, as it identifies Crozier's attitude before his redemption.
.
A final note on this book. I was reading it while waiting for supper at The Saxophone pub in Bangkok and listening to a good jazz band, and I came upon its description of a bonfire on the ice as a “Guy Fawkes Day above the Arctic Circle.” I checked my calendar, and indeed it was 5 November, Guy Fawkes Night, that very night. (“A penny for the old guy.”)
.
I love this book.
.
-Zenwind.
.
Review: Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
.
The first Dan Simmons works I read were the four big science fiction novels making up his Hyperion Cantos series. This had a lot of background involving the English Romantic poet John Keats. Keats – or a clone of Keats – even appears as a minor character. I had always been a great fan of Keats’ shorter poems, but I had never read his slightly longer attempts at epic poetry in his poems “Hyperion” and “Endymion.” The four novels of this Cantos series are Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion. Read them in order.
.
The narrative style of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales also figures into to the beginning of this series, as various characters give their backgrounds during a long journey. One is also reminded of Boccaccio’s Decameron, where everyone tells their tales.
.
Before I started those four books I did some major homework, finding a volume of Keats’ complete poems with biography, extensive commentaries on the poems, selected letters of his, etc. I read his drafts of the epics “Hyperion” and “Endymion” for the first time, and I immersed myself in the world of Keats, ending with his young death of TB in Rome near the Spanish Steps. With this background I enjoyed the Simmons’ novels more. When the Keats clone is in his room near the Spanish Steps, I already know what it looks like. Reading it, homework and all, was a major project which I really enjoyed.
.
The first Dan Simmons works I read were the four big science fiction novels making up his Hyperion Cantos series. This had a lot of background involving the English Romantic poet John Keats. Keats – or a clone of Keats – even appears as a minor character. I had always been a great fan of Keats’ shorter poems, but I had never read his slightly longer attempts at epic poetry in his poems “Hyperion” and “Endymion.” The four novels of this Cantos series are Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion. Read them in order.
.
The narrative style of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales also figures into to the beginning of this series, as various characters give their backgrounds during a long journey. One is also reminded of Boccaccio’s Decameron, where everyone tells their tales.
.
Before I started those four books I did some major homework, finding a volume of Keats’ complete poems with biography, extensive commentaries on the poems, selected letters of his, etc. I read his drafts of the epics “Hyperion” and “Endymion” for the first time, and I immersed myself in the world of Keats, ending with his young death of TB in Rome near the Spanish Steps. With this background I enjoyed the Simmons’ novels more. When the Keats clone is in his room near the Spanish Steps, I already know what it looks like. Reading it, homework and all, was a major project which I really enjoyed.
.
01 August 2010
Book Review: Ilium / Olympos, by Dan Simmons
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One of Dan Simmons’ best is the science fiction double novel, Ilium and Olympos, in which the Greek gods are reincarnated or duplicated as characters on the planet Mars of the future. Mons Olympus, the old volcanic cone on Mars is the highest mountain in the solar system, and a lot of action will happen there in a new Olympos. Action on the battlefield at ancient Troy is featured, with all the Homeric heroes there in this revised story. There are anomalies of time and space in the story, so that over 5,000 years in time and the entire reach of the solar system are involved. You simply will not believe how the stories of both Achilles and Odysseus end up.
.
The background literary context of these two huge books is Homer, most especially The Iliad, but also to some extent The Odyssey, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Those are the most important sources and are most important to read as background, but Simmons also refers to Nabokov’s novel Ada or Ador: A Family Chronicle and to Proust’s multi-volume work In Search of Lost Time, aka Remembrance of Things Past. Since certain literary/mythic characters and their stories pop up in these novels, I first refreshed my readings of some of those classics, re-reading The Iliad, The Tempest and surveys of classical mythology. However, I passed on perusing Proust, and I never got a chance to acquire the Nabokov novel. I really enjoyed Ilium and Olympos and recommend them. Read the two in their proper order.
.
One of Dan Simmons’ best is the science fiction double novel, Ilium and Olympos, in which the Greek gods are reincarnated or duplicated as characters on the planet Mars of the future. Mons Olympus, the old volcanic cone on Mars is the highest mountain in the solar system, and a lot of action will happen there in a new Olympos. Action on the battlefield at ancient Troy is featured, with all the Homeric heroes there in this revised story. There are anomalies of time and space in the story, so that over 5,000 years in time and the entire reach of the solar system are involved. You simply will not believe how the stories of both Achilles and Odysseus end up.
.
The background literary context of these two huge books is Homer, most especially The Iliad, but also to some extent The Odyssey, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Those are the most important sources and are most important to read as background, but Simmons also refers to Nabokov’s novel Ada or Ador: A Family Chronicle and to Proust’s multi-volume work In Search of Lost Time, aka Remembrance of Things Past. Since certain literary/mythic characters and their stories pop up in these novels, I first refreshed my readings of some of those classics, re-reading The Iliad, The Tempest and surveys of classical mythology. However, I passed on perusing Proust, and I never got a chance to acquire the Nabokov novel. I really enjoyed Ilium and Olympos and recommend them. Read the two in their proper order.
.
Reviews: Dan Simmons' novels
.
Dan Simmons is one hell of a fiction writer and one of my favorites. (I thank Jeff Riggenbach for pointing out his works many years ago.) Simmons writes in many genres: science fiction, historical fiction, horror, fantasy, mysteries and thrillers – and he sometimes mixes several genres in one book. Some of his works stand alone while others are part of larger series, and most of the individual novels are huge. I have only yet read a fraction of his voluminous body of work, but I’ve never been disappointed.
.
Simmons excels in “intertexuality,” where his stories and characters often refer back to other works of literature such as Homer, Shakespeare, Keats, etc. I had heard about this aspect of his work, so I have always made sure to first do my homework – i.e., to find out which authors/works are referenced in any one book, and then to try reading those works – before beginning a new Simmons novel. He is richly versed in literature. When he often delves into themes of Classical Antiquity, it is wise to have a reference work on Greek and Roman mythology close by, such as the ones by Bulfinch or Edith Hamilton.
.
I will soon review here, separately, some of Simmons’ novels that I’ve read: The Terror, which is my personal favorite; The Hyperion Cantos, consisting of four novels; and Ilium and Olympos, a set of two.
.
(About his first novel, The Song of Kali, I’ll only say this here: Don’t read this one unless you have a perversely excessive taste for true horror; Simmons may have gone way over the line with it. One of Simmons' latest novels is Drood, which is concerned with Dickens' last and unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It is told from the viewpoint of Wilkie Collins, a friend of and frequent collaborator with Dickens.)
.
-Zenwind.
.
Dan Simmons is one hell of a fiction writer and one of my favorites. (I thank Jeff Riggenbach for pointing out his works many years ago.) Simmons writes in many genres: science fiction, historical fiction, horror, fantasy, mysteries and thrillers – and he sometimes mixes several genres in one book. Some of his works stand alone while others are part of larger series, and most of the individual novels are huge. I have only yet read a fraction of his voluminous body of work, but I’ve never been disappointed.
.
Simmons excels in “intertexuality,” where his stories and characters often refer back to other works of literature such as Homer, Shakespeare, Keats, etc. I had heard about this aspect of his work, so I have always made sure to first do my homework – i.e., to find out which authors/works are referenced in any one book, and then to try reading those works – before beginning a new Simmons novel. He is richly versed in literature. When he often delves into themes of Classical Antiquity, it is wise to have a reference work on Greek and Roman mythology close by, such as the ones by Bulfinch or Edith Hamilton.
.
I will soon review here, separately, some of Simmons’ novels that I’ve read: The Terror, which is my personal favorite; The Hyperion Cantos, consisting of four novels; and Ilium and Olympos, a set of two.
.
(About his first novel, The Song of Kali, I’ll only say this here: Don’t read this one unless you have a perversely excessive taste for true horror; Simmons may have gone way over the line with it. One of Simmons' latest novels is Drood, which is concerned with Dickens' last and unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It is told from the viewpoint of Wilkie Collins, a friend of and frequent collaborator with Dickens.)
.
-Zenwind.
.
Vampire Book Review: The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
.
If you love history and are fascinated by Dracula stories – both the gothic tales and the real history of Vlad III The Impaler -- you should enjoy this novel.
.
More precisely, if you appreciate the sound methodology and scholarship of true historians, if you love libraries and old books, if you can get hooked on well-told arcane histories of exotic places and times such as the late medieval Balkans as the Ottoman Turks are over-running Southeastern Europe, if gothic tales of vampirism tempt you, and if you like good fiction writing mixed with it all, then The Historian (2005) by Elizabeth Kostova should be well worth reading.
.
I had heard good things about this book, but I was not prepared to like it so much. I had read In Search of Dracula and follow-up histories about the real Vlad Dracula, aka Vlad III Tepes (1431-1476 CE), when they were first published several decades ago, and of course I was a major fan of Bram Stoker’s novel, of Bela Lugosi’s movie classic and of a few other of the better-made vampire films.
.
In this novel, the historical detail fascinated me, and the historian-as-detective plot delighted me. The action sweeps across many decades in the 20th century – as well as the 15th century and other times – and much of it takes place in the 1950s in an Eastern Europe that is still behind the communist Iron Curtain and in the grip of sinister masters.
.
I could not put the book down until I had finished. You might want to keep an Atlas or world map handy while you read, as the scenes often include travels to places most of us usually do not visit or know much about.
.
-Zenwind.
.
If you love history and are fascinated by Dracula stories – both the gothic tales and the real history of Vlad III The Impaler -- you should enjoy this novel.
.
More precisely, if you appreciate the sound methodology and scholarship of true historians, if you love libraries and old books, if you can get hooked on well-told arcane histories of exotic places and times such as the late medieval Balkans as the Ottoman Turks are over-running Southeastern Europe, if gothic tales of vampirism tempt you, and if you like good fiction writing mixed with it all, then The Historian (2005) by Elizabeth Kostova should be well worth reading.
.
I had heard good things about this book, but I was not prepared to like it so much. I had read In Search of Dracula and follow-up histories about the real Vlad Dracula, aka Vlad III Tepes (1431-1476 CE), when they were first published several decades ago, and of course I was a major fan of Bram Stoker’s novel, of Bela Lugosi’s movie classic and of a few other of the better-made vampire films.
.
In this novel, the historical detail fascinated me, and the historian-as-detective plot delighted me. The action sweeps across many decades in the 20th century – as well as the 15th century and other times – and much of it takes place in the 1950s in an Eastern Europe that is still behind the communist Iron Curtain and in the grip of sinister masters.
.
I could not put the book down until I had finished. You might want to keep an Atlas or world map handy while you read, as the scenes often include travels to places most of us usually do not visit or know much about.
.
-Zenwind.
.
24 July 2010
Book Review: David Gibbins’ Novels
.
If you do NOT like history or archaeology, stop reading this review now. But if you do love these sciences – as well as good fiction writing – this is one author of fiction that you might appreciate, as the historical parts of his books are outstanding.
.
A reviewer once wrote, “What do you get when you cross Indiana Jones with Dan Brown? Answer: David Gibbins.” That sums it up.
.
David Gibbins is a leading marine archaeologist and an authority on shipwrecks and sunken cities. He did his studies in archaeology at Cambridge and has taught university courses on archaeology and ancient history in England. He now does fieldwork and writes one novel per year.
.
Gibbins’ five novels feature a modern marine archaeologist, his colleagues and support teams (many with military experience), former professors, and world-class scholars. The historical knowledge revealed in their conversations is fascinating. These stories are primarily historical detective adventures and partly thrillers, following the clues from archaeological finds or discoveries in ancient libraries to unexpected links through time.
.
The action involves a lot of travel to historic sites throughout the world, tons of ancient history lessons, and usually sinister institutions and villains somewhere in the background. Very dangerous black market grave robbers and arms dealers are often lurking. His historical research is very good, with the added imaginative fiction taking you further out.
.
At the end of each novel is an “Author’s Notes” section where he debriefs the reader by sorting fact from fiction in the story you have just read. He tells you what in the story is considered to be fairly solid history and why, briefly mentioning the documentary sources (e.g., Plutarch, Josephus, Greenlanders’ Saga, Christopher Wren, Sima Qian, Plato, various modern authors, etc., with many of these sources already mentioned in conversations within the story). Where he has added fictional content to the stories, he tells you, and it is often about actual longstanding historical rumors, puzzles, implications or speculations which he uses with a “what if?” kind of imaginary development.
.
Ideally, it might be good to read the novels in order of their publication, because the characters’ back-stories accumulate and build on one another. But you can still fully appreciate each individual novel if read out-of-order by starting with any one of them.
.
The first novel in this series is Atlantis, where they stumble into historic clues of the possible location of this legendary lost sunken city. We are taken from clues in a dusty dig in the desert of Egypt on to Plato’s legend, then to a Minoan shipwreck in the Mediterranean, and on to the Black Sea and the wreck of a long-lost Soviet nuclear submarine, then to nearby Abkhazia (a former autonomous region in the Georgian Republic USSR, and now a gangster haven). A lot of ancient history is sifted through and reviewed.
.
The next novel, Crusader Gold, finds our heroes searching for the lost menorah from the Temple in Jerusalem that Titus had brought to Rome after the Roman conquest of Judea in AD 70. After the fall of Rome it may have gone to Carthage or Byzantium. The story involves the Varangian mercenaries in Byzantium led by the historic Viking Harald Hardrada, who once even went to Jerusalem; then there is more about the crusades. Then it is the findings of maps and documents in an old English cathedral; and then startling evidence in the ice from Greenland’s medieval times as well as in the 20th century involving a Nazi agent. A lot more geography and history is covered in this one book, and you won’t believe where they end up.
.
The Lost Tomb (aka, The Last Gospel in the UK) involves an excavation at Herculaneum, which was buried along with Pompeii by Vesuvius in AD 79. Then the underwater archaeologists think they may have found the shipwreck of St. Paul. A lot of ancient Roman history is covered and speculated on, including a lot about Claudius and Pliny the Elder. There is a dive through old sewers of Rome and one into an old submerged part of London. The history of the ancient Britons who resisted the Romans is involved. And much more.
.
The Tiger Warrior starts with an archaeological dig on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea and about the site’s actual link to the sea trade routes connecting ancient Rome and the East. It talks about the lost Roman legions of Crassus that were defeated by the Parthians in 53 BC at Carrhae and whose survivors were led into slavery at Margiana (Merv, Turkmenistan); about India and the British colonial experience there including the 1879 Rampa Rebellion in southeastern India; about the overland Silk Road, which takes us high up in the mountains of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan and the Pamir Knot, then to northeastern Afghanistan’s lapis lazuli mines. The tomb of China’s First Emperor casts its shadow over the action.
.
The fifth novel, The Mask of Troy, I just finished reading yesterday. The cover photo shows the golden “Mask of Agamemnon” that Heinrich Schliemann revealed at Mycenae in 1876. (Caveat about Schliemann: a controversial figure, he was a clumsy digger and boastful, but he showed the world that there might be some historical truth within old myths such as Troy; Gibbins debriefs us on him, warts and all, at the end.) This novel takes us underwater to naval wrecks from the harbor off Troy dating from the 1200 BC Trojan War to the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign. Nazi death camp experiences yield important clues to the mystery. There is speculation on Homer’s lost epic poem that followed The Iliad, the one that describes the actual Fall of Troy and about how horrific that final battle was.
.
Gibbins is getting better all the time, and I highly recommend his books. His five novels thus far, in inexpensive paperback, are:
.
Atlantis (2005)
Crusader Gold (2006)
The Lost Tomb (in the UK, The Last Gospel) (2008)
The Tiger Warrior (2009)
The Mask of Troy (2010)
.
If you do NOT like history or archaeology, stop reading this review now. But if you do love these sciences – as well as good fiction writing – this is one author of fiction that you might appreciate, as the historical parts of his books are outstanding.
.
A reviewer once wrote, “What do you get when you cross Indiana Jones with Dan Brown? Answer: David Gibbins.” That sums it up.
.
David Gibbins is a leading marine archaeologist and an authority on shipwrecks and sunken cities. He did his studies in archaeology at Cambridge and has taught university courses on archaeology and ancient history in England. He now does fieldwork and writes one novel per year.
.
Gibbins’ five novels feature a modern marine archaeologist, his colleagues and support teams (many with military experience), former professors, and world-class scholars. The historical knowledge revealed in their conversations is fascinating. These stories are primarily historical detective adventures and partly thrillers, following the clues from archaeological finds or discoveries in ancient libraries to unexpected links through time.
.
The action involves a lot of travel to historic sites throughout the world, tons of ancient history lessons, and usually sinister institutions and villains somewhere in the background. Very dangerous black market grave robbers and arms dealers are often lurking. His historical research is very good, with the added imaginative fiction taking you further out.
.
At the end of each novel is an “Author’s Notes” section where he debriefs the reader by sorting fact from fiction in the story you have just read. He tells you what in the story is considered to be fairly solid history and why, briefly mentioning the documentary sources (e.g., Plutarch, Josephus, Greenlanders’ Saga, Christopher Wren, Sima Qian, Plato, various modern authors, etc., with many of these sources already mentioned in conversations within the story). Where he has added fictional content to the stories, he tells you, and it is often about actual longstanding historical rumors, puzzles, implications or speculations which he uses with a “what if?” kind of imaginary development.
.
Ideally, it might be good to read the novels in order of their publication, because the characters’ back-stories accumulate and build on one another. But you can still fully appreciate each individual novel if read out-of-order by starting with any one of them.
.
The first novel in this series is Atlantis, where they stumble into historic clues of the possible location of this legendary lost sunken city. We are taken from clues in a dusty dig in the desert of Egypt on to Plato’s legend, then to a Minoan shipwreck in the Mediterranean, and on to the Black Sea and the wreck of a long-lost Soviet nuclear submarine, then to nearby Abkhazia (a former autonomous region in the Georgian Republic USSR, and now a gangster haven). A lot of ancient history is sifted through and reviewed.
.
The next novel, Crusader Gold, finds our heroes searching for the lost menorah from the Temple in Jerusalem that Titus had brought to Rome after the Roman conquest of Judea in AD 70. After the fall of Rome it may have gone to Carthage or Byzantium. The story involves the Varangian mercenaries in Byzantium led by the historic Viking Harald Hardrada, who once even went to Jerusalem; then there is more about the crusades. Then it is the findings of maps and documents in an old English cathedral; and then startling evidence in the ice from Greenland’s medieval times as well as in the 20th century involving a Nazi agent. A lot more geography and history is covered in this one book, and you won’t believe where they end up.
.
The Lost Tomb (aka, The Last Gospel in the UK) involves an excavation at Herculaneum, which was buried along with Pompeii by Vesuvius in AD 79. Then the underwater archaeologists think they may have found the shipwreck of St. Paul. A lot of ancient Roman history is covered and speculated on, including a lot about Claudius and Pliny the Elder. There is a dive through old sewers of Rome and one into an old submerged part of London. The history of the ancient Britons who resisted the Romans is involved. And much more.
.
The Tiger Warrior starts with an archaeological dig on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea and about the site’s actual link to the sea trade routes connecting ancient Rome and the East. It talks about the lost Roman legions of Crassus that were defeated by the Parthians in 53 BC at Carrhae and whose survivors were led into slavery at Margiana (Merv, Turkmenistan); about India and the British colonial experience there including the 1879 Rampa Rebellion in southeastern India; about the overland Silk Road, which takes us high up in the mountains of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan and the Pamir Knot, then to northeastern Afghanistan’s lapis lazuli mines. The tomb of China’s First Emperor casts its shadow over the action.
.
The fifth novel, The Mask of Troy, I just finished reading yesterday. The cover photo shows the golden “Mask of Agamemnon” that Heinrich Schliemann revealed at Mycenae in 1876. (Caveat about Schliemann: a controversial figure, he was a clumsy digger and boastful, but he showed the world that there might be some historical truth within old myths such as Troy; Gibbins debriefs us on him, warts and all, at the end.) This novel takes us underwater to naval wrecks from the harbor off Troy dating from the 1200 BC Trojan War to the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign. Nazi death camp experiences yield important clues to the mystery. There is speculation on Homer’s lost epic poem that followed The Iliad, the one that describes the actual Fall of Troy and about how horrific that final battle was.
.
Gibbins is getting better all the time, and I highly recommend his books. His five novels thus far, in inexpensive paperback, are:
.
Atlantis (2005)
Crusader Gold (2006)
The Lost Tomb (in the UK, The Last Gospel) (2008)
The Tiger Warrior (2009)
The Mask of Troy (2010)
.
18 July 2010
Book Review: Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (2010) by Karl Marlantes
.
This is a great Vietnam War tale – and although it is a work of fiction it is still authentic in spirit and in its every detail. Matterhorn is the name of a fictitious hill within the story in the Khe Sanh area of I Corps, South Vietnam. This is the best novel that I have ever read to come out of the Vietnam experience and one of the best war novels I’ve ever read. I highly recommend it.
.
The author, Karl Marlantes, has been there. He was a highly decorated Marine platoon commander in Vietnam, earning the Navy Cross (the only higher award for Navy and Marine Corps personnel being the Medal of Honor), the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, ten Air Medals and two Navy Commendation Medals for valor. Keeping in mind the notorious stinginess of the Marine Corps in awarding medals of any kind, his achievements are noteworthy. Marlantes is also a Yale graduate and a Rhodes scholar. He spent over 30 years working on this, his debut novel.
.
The novel gives you the experience of the Vietnam War, the insane horrors of combat, the constant filth, both the extremes of the tropical heat to the shivering cold nights when soaking wet and bone-weary. Race relation problems of the late 1960s are handled very well, and also the phenomena of “fragging” an incompetent officer or NCO. For Marines planning to stay in the Corps, there was a distinction between the more professional “career men” versus the “lifers.” A lifer was defined as “someone who can’t make it on the outside,” someone with enough rank to make your life miserable for no good reason, and these guys were sometimes targets of fraggings. The dialogues and the profanities are exactly right.
.
The stupid politics of that war is everywhere a major theme, as lives are wasted taking hard-won territory only to abandon it soon after. On occasion an officer would think more about their own career advancements than the losses or hardships of their men. Those being killed and maimed are usually teenagers who haven’t even lived their lives yet. The book sometimes makes you very angry, but it is ultimately redeeming.
.
The protagonist, 2nd Lt. Mellas, evolves from a spoiled college kid with military-political ambitions to a good combat officer and a compassionate commander of men. He learns from both the enlisted and commissioned Marines who have been in-country before him. The other characters are very well drawn and very authentic, especially Lt. Hawke, the kind of guy that men will follow anywhere. The humor in the midst of horror also comes through at times.
.
There were many details in the story that really brought back vivid memories. For example, the concussion from the explosion of in-coming enemy mortar rounds sending a wave of pressure against your eyeballs as well as your eardrums. Also well-written are the times when you think that you will certainly die soon – e.g., Cortell and Jermain discuss Pascal’s Wager, although they have never heard of Pascal or his philosophical “wager” about what awaits us after death. We all knew about that bet in some way of our own and were forced to think about it. That is haunting.
.
Before reading the novel, definitely read the “Glossary of Weapons, Technical Terms, Slang and Jargon” in back, and keep a bookmarker in place there so that you can refer back to it while reading. The Vietnam War had its own unique jargon, but so did the Navy and Marine Corps, and so a lot of it is esoteric to those services. But even I had to look over this Glossary many times for things such as radio call-sign protocol details, etc.
.
Also, keep handy the three pages in front of the novel for the fictitious “Chain of Command and Principal Characters” chart (with their radio call-signs in italics), and also the two map pages: “Bravo Company’s Area of Operation” and “Matterhorn and Helicopter Hill.” The USMC units in this novel are fictitious, in that they are real Marine (reserve) units but they were never in Vietnam. Also, the map adds the fictitious Vietnam hills Matterhorn, Helicopter Hill, Eiger and Sky Cap, and this map goes farther west toward the Laotian border than it did in reality beyond Khe Sanh. Read the author’s disclaimer on the copyright page for the full details about his fiction versus the reality.
.
I think this novel is going to be a war classic.
.
This is a great Vietnam War tale – and although it is a work of fiction it is still authentic in spirit and in its every detail. Matterhorn is the name of a fictitious hill within the story in the Khe Sanh area of I Corps, South Vietnam. This is the best novel that I have ever read to come out of the Vietnam experience and one of the best war novels I’ve ever read. I highly recommend it.
.
The author, Karl Marlantes, has been there. He was a highly decorated Marine platoon commander in Vietnam, earning the Navy Cross (the only higher award for Navy and Marine Corps personnel being the Medal of Honor), the Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts, ten Air Medals and two Navy Commendation Medals for valor. Keeping in mind the notorious stinginess of the Marine Corps in awarding medals of any kind, his achievements are noteworthy. Marlantes is also a Yale graduate and a Rhodes scholar. He spent over 30 years working on this, his debut novel.
.
The novel gives you the experience of the Vietnam War, the insane horrors of combat, the constant filth, both the extremes of the tropical heat to the shivering cold nights when soaking wet and bone-weary. Race relation problems of the late 1960s are handled very well, and also the phenomena of “fragging” an incompetent officer or NCO. For Marines planning to stay in the Corps, there was a distinction between the more professional “career men” versus the “lifers.” A lifer was defined as “someone who can’t make it on the outside,” someone with enough rank to make your life miserable for no good reason, and these guys were sometimes targets of fraggings. The dialogues and the profanities are exactly right.
.
The stupid politics of that war is everywhere a major theme, as lives are wasted taking hard-won territory only to abandon it soon after. On occasion an officer would think more about their own career advancements than the losses or hardships of their men. Those being killed and maimed are usually teenagers who haven’t even lived their lives yet. The book sometimes makes you very angry, but it is ultimately redeeming.
.
The protagonist, 2nd Lt. Mellas, evolves from a spoiled college kid with military-political ambitions to a good combat officer and a compassionate commander of men. He learns from both the enlisted and commissioned Marines who have been in-country before him. The other characters are very well drawn and very authentic, especially Lt. Hawke, the kind of guy that men will follow anywhere. The humor in the midst of horror also comes through at times.
.
There were many details in the story that really brought back vivid memories. For example, the concussion from the explosion of in-coming enemy mortar rounds sending a wave of pressure against your eyeballs as well as your eardrums. Also well-written are the times when you think that you will certainly die soon – e.g., Cortell and Jermain discuss Pascal’s Wager, although they have never heard of Pascal or his philosophical “wager” about what awaits us after death. We all knew about that bet in some way of our own and were forced to think about it. That is haunting.
.
Before reading the novel, definitely read the “Glossary of Weapons, Technical Terms, Slang and Jargon” in back, and keep a bookmarker in place there so that you can refer back to it while reading. The Vietnam War had its own unique jargon, but so did the Navy and Marine Corps, and so a lot of it is esoteric to those services. But even I had to look over this Glossary many times for things such as radio call-sign protocol details, etc.
.
Also, keep handy the three pages in front of the novel for the fictitious “Chain of Command and Principal Characters” chart (with their radio call-signs in italics), and also the two map pages: “Bravo Company’s Area of Operation” and “Matterhorn and Helicopter Hill.” The USMC units in this novel are fictitious, in that they are real Marine (reserve) units but they were never in Vietnam. Also, the map adds the fictitious Vietnam hills Matterhorn, Helicopter Hill, Eiger and Sky Cap, and this map goes farther west toward the Laotian border than it did in reality beyond Khe Sanh. Read the author’s disclaimer on the copyright page for the full details about his fiction versus the reality.
.
I think this novel is going to be a war classic.
.
25 June 2010
Book Review: A Man on the Moon (1994) by Andrew Chaikin
.
“Man must explore. And this is exploration at its greatest.” Those were the first words of astronaut Dave Scott on his first Apollo 15 moonwalk, and they sum up the spirit of this book. It is the story of, and a tribute to, the Apollo program right through to its last mission, and the book was the basis of the TV mini-series “From the Earth to the Moon.”
.
I found this book to be a very exciting read (I read it twice) as it revealed that each Apollo mission was an incredibly unique journey in itself, with often gripping dangers, uncertainties and challenges. Many people are familiar with the triumph of Apollo 11 and the close-call of Apollo 13, but few of us paid much attention to later Apollo missions up through 17, the last one. Each new mission constantly upped the level of the technology and the expectations, building on the previous test flight experiences, and they marvelously expanded both science and the human adventure.
.
Especially evident in this book is how the whole program exemplified the human virtue of Rationality. Even though it was an audaciously risky venture, it was done with a scrupulously rational risk-taking and with a carefully thought-out approach by a huge team – a combination of scientists, engineers, manufacturers and test pilots. Chaikin describes the approach as a “series of methodic, incremental steps that are the hallmark of test flying.” (p.54). E.g., they first had to test fly the Gemini program flights and the earliest Apollo flights in order to learn how to dock two space vehicles in space, etc.
.
Test pilots have a reputation for being fighter-jocks and wild mavericks with balls of brass. True enough. But those chosen to be astronauts were also very highly educated and highly disciplined test pilots. For them and their fellows on the entire Apollo team, the drill was to plan, to make checklists, to practice, to test, then to re-think, re-plan, make new checklists, practice, test, etc. They did it by the numbers, and simulators were used constantly to practice, practice, practice. Thus, when unforeseen emergencies did occur, they were ready to think their way through the options. Odysseus with an engineering degree.
.
When, in the far future, humanity looks back on its history, the Apollo program will be seen as one of those truly great human adventures. And A Man on the Moon will be one of its greatest celebrations.
.
-Zenwind.
.
“Man must explore. And this is exploration at its greatest.” Those were the first words of astronaut Dave Scott on his first Apollo 15 moonwalk, and they sum up the spirit of this book. It is the story of, and a tribute to, the Apollo program right through to its last mission, and the book was the basis of the TV mini-series “From the Earth to the Moon.”
.
I found this book to be a very exciting read (I read it twice) as it revealed that each Apollo mission was an incredibly unique journey in itself, with often gripping dangers, uncertainties and challenges. Many people are familiar with the triumph of Apollo 11 and the close-call of Apollo 13, but few of us paid much attention to later Apollo missions up through 17, the last one. Each new mission constantly upped the level of the technology and the expectations, building on the previous test flight experiences, and they marvelously expanded both science and the human adventure.
.
Especially evident in this book is how the whole program exemplified the human virtue of Rationality. Even though it was an audaciously risky venture, it was done with a scrupulously rational risk-taking and with a carefully thought-out approach by a huge team – a combination of scientists, engineers, manufacturers and test pilots. Chaikin describes the approach as a “series of methodic, incremental steps that are the hallmark of test flying.” (p.54). E.g., they first had to test fly the Gemini program flights and the earliest Apollo flights in order to learn how to dock two space vehicles in space, etc.
.
Test pilots have a reputation for being fighter-jocks and wild mavericks with balls of brass. True enough. But those chosen to be astronauts were also very highly educated and highly disciplined test pilots. For them and their fellows on the entire Apollo team, the drill was to plan, to make checklists, to practice, to test, then to re-think, re-plan, make new checklists, practice, test, etc. They did it by the numbers, and simulators were used constantly to practice, practice, practice. Thus, when unforeseen emergencies did occur, they were ready to think their way through the options. Odysseus with an engineering degree.
.
When, in the far future, humanity looks back on its history, the Apollo program will be seen as one of those truly great human adventures. And A Man on the Moon will be one of its greatest celebrations.
.
-Zenwind.
.
16 June 2010
Satori on Parris Island, 1968
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(“Satori” – a Japanese Zen term for a flash of sudden insight, a small shot of instant enlightenment, a profound step on the path to awakening.)
.
November/December 1968: Parris Island, South Carolina, U.S. Marine Corps Boot Camp. It was one hell of a bad place for a sensitive student of Zen striving for peace of mind and a glimpse of enlightenment.
.
One item of military business right off the bat was specifying vital info for our dog-tags: i.e., name, serial number, branch of military service, blood type, and religious preference. But on this last item, religion, I just didn’t fit in – as I never have fit in with any defined group anywhere in my life.
.
The most relevant quasi-religious label for me in those days and nights of extreme discipline would have been “Zen Buddhist.” After all, some state of mind near that had been my solace and discipline in the years before my enlistment – and that was especially true of my last summer and autumn between high school and the Corps, where I meditated in the forest.
.
(“Zen” – Japanese term for a higher meditative state. It is derived from the same word and concept in: Pali, “jhana”; Sanskrit, “dhyana”; Chinese, “Ch’an”; Korean, “Son.”)
.
Yet “Zen Buddhist” was only partially true for me. I never identified much with it as a “religion” or with the modern Zen schools in Japan – except for their historical warrior ethos, their visual aesthetics and some of their great poets. I was always too much of a Thoreau-like loner with no drummer to march to. I just don’t belong.
.
My own intro to Zen was scandalous, via Jack Kerouac’s Beat Zen and Gary Snyder’s translations of the “Cold Mountain Poems” of the ancient Chinese mountain hermit poet and Ch’an/Zen-lunatic Han Shan. So, should I have inscribed on my dog-tags something like “Ch’an-Zen-Taoist Beatnik forest hermit hipster”? Too big for the dog-tag plates.
.
Also, I was afraid of writing down “Zen Buddhist” because I feared that I would have the living shit beat out of me by my Drill Instructors for my heathenish and un-American ways. These guys were all-American warriors but not thoughtful scholars. So I caved in to fear and had to choose the only obligatory religious label left: “No Preference.” That has embarrassed me ever since because I was so cowardly. After all, I was going off to war, and possibly to my death, so I should have customized my own epitaph.
.
Ok, now to the satori.
.
On Sundays we had choices of religious services to attend in the morning: Protestant, Catholic or Jewish. If you refused these you stayed at the barracks and were worked extremely hard by the D.I. there. I chose Protestant just to get out and get the chance to sit and meditate in a chair while the preacher droned about something in the background.
.
Going to and from church was a more relaxed kind of march, where we stayed in step but didn’t have to put our heels down hard as the usual. The D.I. just took us there and back, with no pressure, and it was very peaceful – my favorite time of the week. A kind of “walking zen.”
.
It was a Sunday morning in early winter, with a hard driving rain, very dark skies, and thunder and lightening. We all wore our green GI rain ponchos, the huge ones with the big hoods to fit over helmet and gear. I fell into a meditative trance as we stepped along on the wet pavement.
.
Then, I looked up and around at my fellow boots/recruits. All heads and faces were bowed against the driving rain and were invisible because of the huge hoods, and everyone was just looking at the feet of the guy in front of them. All ponchos were waving back and forth together in perfect easy rhythm as we marched along in step.
.
Satori! Suddenly it seemed that we were all Zen monks hundreds of years ago at a Kyoto temple, in perfect harmonious movement.
.
That little flash has continued to fill me with immense joy and a meditative high whenever I think back on it.
.
-Zenwind.
.
(“Satori” – a Japanese Zen term for a flash of sudden insight, a small shot of instant enlightenment, a profound step on the path to awakening.)
.
November/December 1968: Parris Island, South Carolina, U.S. Marine Corps Boot Camp. It was one hell of a bad place for a sensitive student of Zen striving for peace of mind and a glimpse of enlightenment.
.
One item of military business right off the bat was specifying vital info for our dog-tags: i.e., name, serial number, branch of military service, blood type, and religious preference. But on this last item, religion, I just didn’t fit in – as I never have fit in with any defined group anywhere in my life.
.
The most relevant quasi-religious label for me in those days and nights of extreme discipline would have been “Zen Buddhist.” After all, some state of mind near that had been my solace and discipline in the years before my enlistment – and that was especially true of my last summer and autumn between high school and the Corps, where I meditated in the forest.
.
(“Zen” – Japanese term for a higher meditative state. It is derived from the same word and concept in: Pali, “jhana”; Sanskrit, “dhyana”; Chinese, “Ch’an”; Korean, “Son.”)
.
Yet “Zen Buddhist” was only partially true for me. I never identified much with it as a “religion” or with the modern Zen schools in Japan – except for their historical warrior ethos, their visual aesthetics and some of their great poets. I was always too much of a Thoreau-like loner with no drummer to march to. I just don’t belong.
.
My own intro to Zen was scandalous, via Jack Kerouac’s Beat Zen and Gary Snyder’s translations of the “Cold Mountain Poems” of the ancient Chinese mountain hermit poet and Ch’an/Zen-lunatic Han Shan. So, should I have inscribed on my dog-tags something like “Ch’an-Zen-Taoist Beatnik forest hermit hipster”? Too big for the dog-tag plates.
.
Also, I was afraid of writing down “Zen Buddhist” because I feared that I would have the living shit beat out of me by my Drill Instructors for my heathenish and un-American ways. These guys were all-American warriors but not thoughtful scholars. So I caved in to fear and had to choose the only obligatory religious label left: “No Preference.” That has embarrassed me ever since because I was so cowardly. After all, I was going off to war, and possibly to my death, so I should have customized my own epitaph.
.
Ok, now to the satori.
.
On Sundays we had choices of religious services to attend in the morning: Protestant, Catholic or Jewish. If you refused these you stayed at the barracks and were worked extremely hard by the D.I. there. I chose Protestant just to get out and get the chance to sit and meditate in a chair while the preacher droned about something in the background.
.
Going to and from church was a more relaxed kind of march, where we stayed in step but didn’t have to put our heels down hard as the usual. The D.I. just took us there and back, with no pressure, and it was very peaceful – my favorite time of the week. A kind of “walking zen.”
.
It was a Sunday morning in early winter, with a hard driving rain, very dark skies, and thunder and lightening. We all wore our green GI rain ponchos, the huge ones with the big hoods to fit over helmet and gear. I fell into a meditative trance as we stepped along on the wet pavement.
.
Then, I looked up and around at my fellow boots/recruits. All heads and faces were bowed against the driving rain and were invisible because of the huge hoods, and everyone was just looking at the feet of the guy in front of them. All ponchos were waving back and forth together in perfect easy rhythm as we marched along in step.
.
Satori! Suddenly it seemed that we were all Zen monks hundreds of years ago at a Kyoto temple, in perfect harmonious movement.
.
That little flash has continued to fill me with immense joy and a meditative high whenever I think back on it.
.
-Zenwind.
.
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