In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and the Research this guy did about Hitler's Berlin

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I am wary of authors who constantly tell their audience how much research they did for their work. Authors who do that make me suspicious, and thus when I am reading through their books I disturst their authority. If they need to reassure me that, yes, this thing is true, he knows it, he researched it, then something is wrong. If the author was truly confident in the legitimacy of his work, there would be no need for all of this bombardment.

In "In the Garden of Beasts," Erik Larson is more enamored with how much research he, himself, the author, the big-man-in-the-library, did for this work rather than in telling the actual story. There's no doubt he did a lot of research--he tells you enough times--which is, on its own, quite admirable. But I would rather read the story and then flip to the back, only then discovering the vast amount of citations and sources that backs the work.

Larson, on the other hand, uses his research as the only interesting part of his authorship. His end note, "Among Monsters," talks about how difficult it was for his state of mind to do all of that darned research on that vile man we all love to hate, Hitler. I have no sympathy for Larson, because no one held a gun to his head and told him to stare at the cover of "Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris," by Ian Kershaw. We all know how horrific the Holocaust was. We all know how terrible Hitler was. You are not special in your feelings, Larson.

This all struck me before I noticed Larson's static prose, and boring rendering of Dodd and his daughter Martha. The subtitle is a lie, since the book is not about the Dodd family at all, with the mother and son effectively disappearing after they are introduced, until their deaths at the end. I felt no connection to these characters, and found the book itself to be more of a list of parties they attended, sad letters they wrote and things they whined about. Which is why the end baffled me.

Larson heralds Dodd as "a lone beacon of American freedom and hope in a land of gathering darkness." (Pg 356) Wait... what? Throughout his diplomacy Dodd is characterized more as a bumbling academic, anti-semitic and incredibly sulky. As a character who comes back to America to give speeches about the horror of the early Nazi regime, he has the possibility to become a fairly deep and complex character, if only Larson had taken that opportunity and ran with it. Instead, there is no life in any of the characters. There is barely any life to this book at all.

The book should have ended with the massacre in 1934. Larson spends so much time wallowing in 1933 that the episode in 1934 is essentially the end of the story. He then speeds through the last 3 years of Dodd's ambassadorship so suddenly that for the last 70 or so pages I didn't know at what point in time the events were happening. It was almost as if Larson either had tired of the subject (like how I felt at the end) or had rushed to meet some sort of deadline. Whichever was the case, the book is a dud. I begrudgingly gave it that second star on account of all that research that Larson reassures us he most decidedly did do.


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rE-view: A History of Experimental Film and Video

*Note: I'm not sure what's up with goodreads or blogspot, but I can't find how to format my reviews as they were before, so things are a little different now.

3/5

As someone who has little experience in artistic film-making and even less knowledge about it, A.L. Rees's A History of Experimental Film and Video is an encyclopedic account of just that: the history of experimental film and video.

It begins with a short preface about the aims of the book, a lengthy introduction defining what, exactly, "avant-garde" is throughout history. The book is then split into two parts, the first starting with the creation of the camera and photography and its development in America. In the second part, after a cunning segue, "A History" focuses on the film scene in Britain and the UK with the occasional mention of a German or French artist. It ends with a look at "contemporary" film-artists today, going as recent as 1998 (and with an original copyright date of 1999, that was fairly contemporary).

An obvious amount of effort and research was put into this volume, with a massive bibliography and over 150 end-notes. "A History" is, as I mentioned before, encyclopedic. As difficult as it is to write about such a complex visual medium, Rees is fairly effective. He or she is able to describe the events of films as well as critically analyze them. However, there are times when Rees's account may be as confusing as the film itself, and without access to the film or video, it is hard to tell. The plates were a help visually, but it would have been nice to have them dispersed throughout the text instead of in an insert. Since they were printed on the same type of paper as the text and in black and white--at in my 2008 print edition--there is no reason not to do this.

The language and style had high diction which, at times, toed the line between academic and arrogance. Lines like "the weight of cultural critique or rupture is therefore axially shifted from the mainstream to the marginal avant-gardes which haunt the fringes of conventional modernism" (93) are more ornamental than necessary, and "[the] concern poetic myth and illumination was displaced onto the formal place of light and colour, away from fictional diegetic space and the singular narrative subject" (67) encouraged my mind to wander. Despite the incredible amount of information laid out, it was sometimes overshadowed by the language.

Overall the book is comprehensive and, as far as textbooks go, pretty engaging. The distracting language and poor layout are setbacks, but I encourage anyone who is interested in or a student of film to read this book.

rE-view: Politically Correct Bedtime Stories

Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life & Times by James Finn Garner

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is a hilarious little collection of re-told fairy tales. In his versions, Garner points out the "negative" cultural influences in each original story, such as sexism, class distinction based on wealth and other numerous stereotypes. The results are highly entertaining and contain new morals that are more relevant to today's audiences.



Patriarchal influence and the oppression of women are present in nearly all of the old fairy tales, something Garner explicitly points out. Stories that normally end in marriage (as the only means of "success" for a woman) are changed entirely. These include Rumpelstiltskin, Rapunzel and Cinderella.



However, some of the changes Garner makes are not entirely positive. A few of the stories, like Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs, use violent and murderous tactics to resolve problems. While some people may find these new versions "immoral," (and probably cringe that their sacred bedtime stories were messed with...) I feel the need to point out that the originals were not entirely "moral" either. I think Garner does this not only to point out the offensive messages in the original tales, but also to show how ridiculous it can be to be obsessed about being "politically correct." The Three Goats Gruff displays this theme the best.



Garner's collection is fun and interesting, and points out the flaws in both antiquated and modern viewpoints. I think he is trying to tell his audience to simply try and be a good person and live a good life. Otherwise we'll all end up paranoid we've offended someone just by existing.



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Having fun with Herge

The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin in America / Cigars of the Pharaoh / The Blue Lotus by Hergé

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Interesting to see the work of Herge as an American. His stories are long and involved and entertaining. However, the images and some text are quite overtly racists. Granted, these stories were first published in the 1940s and 50s, so I suppose it is just a product of its time. Despite that uncomfortable part, the stories are fun and well-drawn, and quite interesting! Herge was a talented man!



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rE-view: Neverwhere

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


As I was just about finished with this work, I hopped on over to the review section and found this little gem which sums up quite nicely how I feel about the book as a whole. As Frankie says, there are "cliche characters, cheesy narration and formulaic plot." Gaiman is quite good at setting up a story for what could be a good and entertaining read, (he is successful in some of his other works) but unfortunately he falls flat here. I could see all the mechanical cogs and gears in this story--the quartz bead from Anaesthesia, the Marquis' character, Richard's oddly-placed boar dreams--and because of that, when the big reveal happened for each of those events, I found I was... disappointed. There was a "well duh that was gonna happen..." kind of moment.

I also think that a lot of Gaiman's work have self-insertion type main characters (ever notice how a lot of them look a little similar to our scruffy, dark-haired author?) which completely takes me out of the story. I didn't sympathize with any of the characters, and when Richard first helps Door, which starts off this entire adventure, I couldn't really believe it. All of the characters were simple devices with the wires hanging out. The villians were overwhelmingly evil. The main characters (like Door and Richard) blatantly containing sob-stories as to be ultra-sympathetic. The story was too black and white. Too predictable. The big climax was especially...well, anti-climatic.

Overall, this book reeks of "anti-mainstream lookI'msopunk/goth/hipster/differentthanallofyoufucktardswhowanttobesuccessfulorliveinsociety graaaagh!!" Jesus Christ, give me a break. Tim Burton succeeded with Nightmare Before Christmas, but now everyone wants to be a Jack or Sally. It even reminds me of how my angsty ex-roommate writes. Amatuerish and self-important. So, I would say the book is a fairly entertaining and easy read, predictable and fantasmic, an attempt at seeming different, dark and edgy, but there's not a whole lot of depth to it. It's an alright introduction to "Urban Fantasy" fiction or "pseudo-science-fiction." Young teenagers who are in love with Tim Burton will probably like this book.

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rE-view: A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns: A Novel by Khaled Hosseini

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



*This review does contain spoilers*

I want to begin my review by first stating that this was the first audiobook I had ever listened to, and I thought the medium was absolutely astounding. The reader was Atossa Leoni, who I thought did a wonderful job (she was also the female lead in the movie The Kite Runner) and truly brought me into the Afghan world. Her pronunciations of the names and sporadic Farsi (I think it’s Farsi) word were a nice touch that could have been lost in book form, due to my ignorance of the language. I have seen a few reviews in which they say the Farsi was distracting and annoying. Had I read this book in traditional form, I would agree. But Leoni seamlessly patches the English and Farsi together, and I thought it was a nice touch.

That being said, I can’t say I really enjoyed this book. First off, which I believe is a hot issue when discussing this book, is that it was overwhelmingly depressing. Yes, I understand that these sorts of things really did and do happen, but this is a work of fiction. Fiction writers need to understand their responsibility that they are creating works that are not real. To get a certain reaction, a fiction writer needs to take a different route than a non-fiction writer, or even a poet. Had this been a non-fiction account of two women’s lives, I would feel differently about it. But as fiction, A Thousand comes off as sentimental and manipulative. Crushing blow after crushing blow is given to the women and it becomes exhausting and repetitive. Near the end of Laila’s story, when her parents are killed just as they are about to leave, I was broken out of the illusion of the story and became frightfully aware of the work as fiction and a book.

The most of the characters are incredibly one-dimensional, and are simply there to fill certain niches: Laila as the beautiful protagonist, (let’s be honest, Mariam’s story was there to catapult Laila’s) Tariq as the beat-all-odds hero, and Rasheed as the abusive scumball husband. I do think Mariam was a little more than one-dimensional because we get a view of her from a young age, but as an adult she loses some characterization and simply becomes a symbol. Jahlil was at the beginning stages of being fleshed out, but he was only a minor character, and too, became a device to augment Laila’s Disney-style ending.

The book follows in Western ideals, which I found a little disconcerting. I will mention the issue of politics in a second, but I want to begin with the idea of morality. Now, I am certainly no expert on Islamic culture, but I felt there was a distinct aura of “westernization is great!” in the book, and a lack of insight in the ideals that an Islamic culture may have. All of the “good guys” in the book had western ideals: America is great! Education for everyone! Give women rights! Polygamy is bad! Now, personal views aside, I didn’t feel like I could take this book as an accurate account on what the people of this culture really thought. I almost felt like Hosseini was pandering to a western (American) audience, so he put in things he thought they could relate with and agree with.

This segues nicely into the idea of politics put into this story. I think, while being an interesting idea, it was not executed properly. Every section about politics, whether hearing it on the radio, by the narrating voice, or even by the characters themselves seems patchy and self-consciously shoved in. There was also a clear indication of who the “bad guys” were (the communists, the Taliban). Of course Rasheed sympathized with the “bad guys” throughout the story. There was also a lovely view of a America and Western nations, which I actually doubt was the case. Again, I’m no expert so I don’t actually know, but I don’t think Afghanistan ever really looked at America through rose-colored glasses in the way Hosseini portrayed it.

There is a bit more I could talk about, but I think this review is already long enough. Overall, I found the story clichéd, stilted and manipulative. I wouldn’t personally recommend it to anyone, but I can see why it appeals to middle-class Americans. I do commend Hosseini for trying to include so many things in one novel, but I do not think he executed it properly. Also: nearly three references to the title randomly planted in, looking like an eyesore? Yikes.

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rE-view: Angela's Ashes

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Despite a lot of the hatred that seems to be around for this book, I found it quite humbling and powerful. Personally, I read it as a story of poverty, growing up and dealing with hardship instead of the "half-assed melodramatic Irish-American story" many other people define it as. It happened to take place in Ireland for most of it, yes, but the vehement rejection of this book as an "Irish book" seems to be missing the point.

McCourt deals with his father's alcoholism, and the odd complacency everyone seems to have for it, his own sense of manhood, identity, poor health, poverty, religion and sexual awakening (AKA: it's a book about growing up). There are times when I can see the dreariness of his life can be overwhelming--hell, there were times I had to put the book down myself because it was just so frustrating and depressing. But I found a sense of humility in the book, and it made me look at my own life through his lens; a lot of my "problems," I found, were quite trivial and didn't really matter in the long run. Isn't that what makes a book good and powerful, if it can affect you even through other veins of your life?

McCourt tells the story of his childhood in the delightful voice of a child, with run-on blabbling and hilariously naive logic, but he reflects on it like an old man, worn and weary with age through the passages he chooses to tell. Not all of this book is flattering to McCourt, and there are times when he deserves no pity, and yet he is still honest enough to include it. I also found the prominence and interpretation of religion interesting. I am not that religious myself, but I could almost feel the sense of hope and rejuvenation McCourt found from it, and near the end, when he recalls being broken down in one of his hometown churchs, I was nearly brought to tears. It was quite a powerful moment. I don't know if I would count this book as "one of the great classics of the last century" but it is definitely a worthwhile read and a great lesson in humility and appreciation of who you are and what you have. In the end, it's hopeful, youthful and uplifting and we all need reminders of that once in a while.

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