Dreamer Easy

As the Wall fell, East Berlin's meticulous secret police went into a tailspin: "Stasi officers were instructed to destroy files, starting with the most incriminating - those naming westerners who spied for them, and those that concerned deaths. They shredded the files until the shredders collapsed. Among other shortages in the east, there was a shredder shortage, so they had to send agents out under cover to West Berlin to buy more. In Building 8 alone, members of the citizens' movement found over one hundred burnt-out shredders. When the Stasi couldn't get any more machines, they started destroying the files by hand, ripping up documents and putting them into sacks. But this was done in such an orderly fashion - whole drawers of documents put into the same bag - that now, in Nuremberg, it is possible for the puzzle women to piece them back together." — Anna Funder, Stasiland

Non-Fiction
John Blofield. Bodhisattva of Compassion: the Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin.
Michael Coogan. The Old Testament: A Very Short Introduction.
Barbara Demick. Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea.
Luciano Florido. Information: a Very Short Introduction.
Swami Harshanansa. Devī and her Aspects.
Luke Timothy Johnson. The New Testament: a Very Short Introduction.
Peter Lowe. The Korean War.
Sally Morgan. My Place.
J.H. Patterson. The Man-Eating Lions of Tsavo.
Salman Rushdie. The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey.
Eric Schlosser. Command and Control. Couldn't put it down.
Ronald Takaki. Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb.

Fiction
Alfred Bester. Extro.
Janet Frame. Owls Do Cry.
Nalo Hopkinson. The New Moon's Arms.
Andrey Kurkov. Death and the Penguin. Strangely difficult to put down.
John le Carré. The Looking-Glass War.
Mary McCarthy. Memories of a Catholic Girlhood.
Atiq Rahami. A Thousand Rooms of Dreams and Fear.
Steven Sherrill. The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break.
Bram Stoker. The Jewel of Seven Stars. I read an abridged version of this in primary school and was so bewildered by the conclusion that I thought "abridged" meant they had shortened the book by removing its ending. Now I see why my infant self was puzzled.
Koushun Takami. Battle Royale. (Trans. Yuji Oniki.) You must read this and then watch the movie, or vice versa.
Philippe Vasset. ScriptGenerator©®™.
Fay Weldon. Watching Me, Watching You. Breathtaking.

Manga
Hatori Bisco. Ouran High School Host Club vol 1.
Hino Matsuri. Vampire Knight vols 1-9.
Kishimoto Masashi. Naruto, vol 5.
Tite Kubo. Bleach volume 3.
Mayu Shinja. Ai Ore volume 8. Well that was confusing.
Yana Toboso. Black Butler, vol 1. Holy ^&*$^%$. vols 2-11

( Books borrowed and bought )

Like The Old Testament: a Very Short Introduction, this clear and interesting little book left me much enlightened. It puts the New Testament into the context of thought and literature at the time it was written - over five decades, rather than over centuries or millennia, like the Hebrew Bible; as the author, Luke Timothy Johnson, explains, this is the literature of "a religious movement on its way to becoming a religion". My impression is of a group of people who've been hit in the face with a shovel (in a spiritual sense, of course) by an electrifying, cosmic experience, and who are staggering about with their hair still standing on end, trying to figure out what to do next. What they do is two things: apply Greek thought to try to make sense of it; and squabble amongst themselves, of course.

Rather than leaving a bunch of notes here, I just want to share one story that I really liked. In Mark 14:51-2, when the soldiers come to arrest Jesus, one of Jesus' followers runs for it stark naked, leaving behind his linen robe. But when the women discover Jesus' empty tomb in Mark 16 - the final chapter - they meet a messenger who tells them that Jesus has risen, described as "a young man dressed in a white robe". Johnson says, "Mark wants readers to understand that the young man who fled naked is already restored, as the first human witness to the resurrection. Mark's Gospels ends not in despair, but in hope."

Well, if Mary McCarthy's Memories of a Catholic Girlhood is not the (Australian?) memoir we studied in Year 11 or 12, what the heck was it? (Memories is a smashing find - talk about serendipity - but definitely the wrong book.)

Cut-and-pasted from my Tumblr. :)

It's been years since I sat down and read a whole book in a day. Historian Ronald Takaki's 1995 book Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb makes a strong, concise argument, based on historical documents such as diaries, letters, and memoirs, that the bomb was not dropped with the intention of ending the war and saving lives, but as a show of force aimed at America's rival, Russia.

Being a historical ignoramus, I've long wondered about the reasoning behind the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reading Professor Takaki's book was prompted by my encounter with this posting and its inappropriately smug, if I'm honest mixture of important points and odd mistakes.

The book supports some of the statements in that posting, while undercutting others, including the original image from White Is: Germany was the original planned target for the atomic bomb, in response to a perceived German nuclear threat. (Germany surrendered in May before the first successful A-bomb test in July, so I suppose we'll never know if the US would have gone through with it.)

On to Takaki's core argument.

President Truman's statement that dropping the bombs saved "half a million" American lives is contradicted by the actual estimates provided to him in June 1945 by the Joint War Plans Committee for the invasion plan: 40,000 killed, not 500,000. The total expected to be killed, wounded, or missing was 193,500, still well short of "half a million".

General Eisenhower, in command of Allied forces in Western Europe, opposed the use of the bomb: Japan was all but defeated and seeking a dignified surrender, so dropping the bomb was "unncessary" and "no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives". General MacArthur, commander in the Pacific, was not consulted about the bomb's use, and called it "completely unnecessary from a military point of view". He, too, regarded the Japanese as already defeated. Admiral Leahy thought even the invasion wouldn't be necessary.

Keen to end the war, the Japanese asked Moscow to negotiate a conditional surrender on their behalf, one in which the emperor would retain his position. Despite a plan approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to offer this compromise, the President insisted on the "unconditional surrender" that had become a slogan popular with the public.

Takaki argues that the real purpose behind dropping the bomb was to demonstrate to Stalin that the US now possessed atomic weapons. Truman was to meet with Stalin and Churchill in Potsdam for negotiations; that meeting was delayed, and work on the Trinity test sped up, so that Truman was able to boast to Stalin of the successful test at the Potsdam meeting. At the same meeting, Secretary of State Byrnes advised the President that exploding an atomic bomb in anger could help to intimidate Russia. This was part of a general strategy of demonstrating US military power to the Soviets (the massive firebombing of Berlin and Dresden, which paved the way for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had earlier been part of the same strategy). Director Groves, leader of the Manhattan Project, similarly understood that "Russia was our enemy, and the Project was conducted on that basis."

IMHO, Takaki makes a powerful case that the most common justification for using the atomic bomb is incorrect. However - to return to the real topic of the original posting - he devotes a chapter to the importance of the "racialization" of the Japanese enemy in the decision to drop the bomb. By the time of the war, anti-Japanese racism had been an ugly part of American culture for decades; with Pearl Harbour, it exploded into a vicious, dehumanising frenzy.

As Takaki points out, in Europe, it was the Nazis who were the enemy, not the Germans, and they were not characterised as subhuman vermin who should be exterminated. I knew a little about the cruelties inflicted by Japanese soldiers - similarly indoctrinated with racial hatred - on their enemies; I didn't know that US soldiers took body parts as trophies. (tbh, this short chapter knocked the breath out of me.) Combining these attitudes with the statements of some military leaders - "For us, THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS IN JAPAN." - makes it easy to believe that, given the choice between nuking Dresden and nuking Hiroshima, the US would have chosen the latter.

Let me end on a couple of points. Firstly, throughout the book, Takaki quotes military leaders, political advisors, and scientists who opposed the use of the bomb (or suggested alternatives, such as a demonstration or use on a strictly military target) not just on strategic grounds but on moral grounds. Thank gods. Secondly, two things about Nagasaki, which was destroyed just two days after the first bomb was used. With Hiroshima utterly destroyed, cutting off all communications, it's possible the Japanese simply didn't have enough time to surrender. And this: Truman didn't know the second bomb was going to be dropped (at least, not so soon); he immediately ordered the military not to drop a third. Blimey!


ETA: Hiroshima atomic bombing did not lead to Japanese surrender, historians argue nearing 70th anniversary (ABC, 5 August 2015)

My knowledge of manga and anime is not extensive, but I don't think I've ever seen one of the plethora of high school student characters actually study, with the exception of Light Yagami from Death Note. (Who was only using it as a cover for mass murder, anyway.) Rather, high school is a venue for ninjas, samurai, sorcerers, demons, and the undead, which must worry Japanese parents already fretting over their children's educations.

( SPOILERS for Vampire Knight )

While sitting around in the ER a few weeks ago, waiting for my swollen tootsies to be triaged (a harmless if alarming medication side effect, as it turned out), I did a little triage of my own – reading some of Kitsch (edited by Gillo Dorfles - translated from the Italian by person or persons unknown). Skip it? Keep it? Extract its knowledgy goodness and pass it on?

In the process I came across several interesting points. The editor argues that, up until very recently, there could be no such thing as "bad taste" when it came to art:

"In ages other than our own, particularly in antiquity, art had a completely different function compared to modern times; it was connected with religious, ethical or political subject matter, which made it in a way 'absolute', unchanging, eternal (always of course within a given cultural milieu)."

Defining kitsch, Dorfles remarks, "it is a problem of individuals who believe that art should only produce pleasant, sugary feelings... in no case should it be a serious matter, a tiring exercise, an involved and critical activity..." Kitsch-lovers he adds, "will judge Raphael as if he were a painter of picture postcards". Kitsch is inferior imitation of art which substitutes sentiment for emotion.

Well, the idea of kitsch as comfortable cutesiness wasn't new to me, and it's easy to sniff at others' taste (the whole book is, inevitably, full of snobbery). What struck me was Dorfles' assertion about "the kitsch aspect in works of today or yesterday which not only clash with our own alleged good taste, but which represent a basically false interpretation of the aesthetic trends of their age". If you will, kitsch is that which aims for art, and misses.

The book covers multiple areas in which kitschy art is liable to be found, including sex, death, and religion. (I turned a page while reading on the bus and was aghast to find myself facing several awful examples of pornokitsch.) "The image of death needs vigor and severity," writes Dorfles, "innocence and putrefaction, blacks and whites; it certainly needs no half tints, sky blues, pinks, angels' wings, frilly chapels or sterilized technology devoid of any real ethical meaning."

In his chapter on Christian kitsch, Karl Pawek remarks, "There has been an enormous loss of substance in Christianity... It is the result of a centuries-old watering-down of the current theological spirit and consciousness. It would not have been possible at the time of the consciousness of mystery which prevailed during the first centuries of the Christian era..." This watering-down resulted in "the substitution of something sweet and nice for something extremely powerful, of secondary for primary, of the psychic and moral Christian event for the objective, ontological event." Now if I'm understanding what this guy is saying, for the earliest Christians, the reality of the divine and its intervention on Earth was profound and immediate, and that's been lost – inevitably? – over so many centuries. (I remember a Catholic friend telling me the Omen movies spooked him because they made it all seem real.) Perhaps the New Age movement is the kitsch version of Neo-Paganism – though gods know we produce plenty of kitsch ourselves.

I've just read Robin Dalton's 1965 autobiography, Aunts Up The Cross, in which she describes one of her father's patients, "one of his regular and more boring hypochondriacs", whom he treated by making "reassuring noises":

"'I get these terrifying palpitations, Doctor - sometimes when I lie down I think I'm going to choke. And then, suddenly, I'll get a feeling of something awful about to happen - it's my nerves, I suppose. Don't you think I should have something to calm my nerves?'"

Those are unmistakeably the miserable, debilitating symptoms of a panic attack. She was right; it was her nerves. It took ten years for my Panic Anxiety Disorder to be diagnosed and treated; I suppose hers never was, except with "an occasional murmur of sympathy". (I can't be too harsh on Dalton's doctor father, however; in five years my first shrink never noticed that I had depression.)

Two interesting things I read yesterday:

1. In my quest for academic stuff about Top Gear, I skimmed through Personality Presenters: Television's Intermediaries with Viewers by Frances Bonner, a look at recent British and Australian TV. There's a great analysis of Stephen Fry's SIARPC, and a general look at how TG is only funny if you understand they're being "naughty" and don't mean it (it alarms me that many viewers may mistake the News segment for news), contrasting it with "ethical" shows about organic gardening and so on. Bonner describes the lads' attempt to make their own biofuel as a "major tale of comic misadventure... with the usual array of high spirits, incompetence tailored to each presenters' designated character flaw (Jeremy's overweening confidence, Richard Hammond's eagerness to prove competitive, and James' slow dreaminess) and ultimate failure."

2. A chapter in Occidentalism: Images of the West (1995, edited by James G. Carrier) written by Millie R. Creighton about the use of gaijin in Japanese advertising - to help create an interesting or fantastical feeling (Japanese ads are not supposed to boast!) and to circumvent expected social behaviour (it's OK to show a foreigner demanding what they want, or kissing in public, for example). Particularly interesting was the dual meaning of (white) Westerners for Japanese society, as both moral threat and bearers of progress and style. But I was almost destroyed by the description of a campaign for men's toiletries featuring a sweaty, dirty Charles Bronson: "To go with the new image, a new bottle was designed to convey a sense of strength. This was achieved by making a huge cap, larger than the bottle."

Frederick Pohl. Alternating Currents.
Tess Williams. Map of Power. Cracking first novel! A well-worked-out post-apocalyptic setting, with no easy answers or endings, plus a first-rate heroine of colour. Cheela is one of three protagonists, each with a different level of technology, whose stories intertwine; but both she and her detailed Antarctic world stand out (and Williams avoids very many tiresome pitfalls when writing about Cheela's tribe and their spirituality). (I've had this novel in a box for a decade; wish I'd got to it sooner.)

( Books bought and borrowed )