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.


View all my reviews

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.



View all my reviews