“Rebecca West: Things Worth Fighting For”

Introduction to Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Rebecca West.

Hitchens' introductory essay to West’s travel log/political commentary about the Balkans in pre WW II Europe. He describes it by asking that we ”Imagine that you have, in fact, purchased at least four fine books for the price of one: The first…is one of the great travel narratives of our time, which seeks to net and analyze one of the most gorgeous and various of ancient and modern societies. The second volume gives an account of the mentality and philosophy of a superbly intelligent woman… The third volume transports any thoughtful or historically minded reader into the vertiginous period between the two World Wars…The fourth volume is a meditation on the never-ending strife between the secular and the numinous, the faithful and the skeptical, the sacred and the profane.”

West was evidently worried that no one would read her book at 1100 pages. I was surprised to find out, after reading this essay and looking back, that Hitchen’s introduction wasn’t 1100 pages plus. The most engaging parts of the essay are the quotes from West’s text (e.g. “ She was one of those widows whose majesty makes their husbands especially dead”)

Hitchens does highlight a section of the book where West goes into a detailed account of the 1914 assassination of Franz Ferdinand that made me want to find that excerpt and read it. I also liked his description of West as deploying “a rhetorical skill that is perhaps too little associated with feminism: the ability to detect a pure bitch at twenty paces” and, especially, his final words “Rebecca West…was often agreeably surprised when her stomach and her heart were (like those of her heroine Queen Elizabeth I) in agreement with her intellect. These are the elements from which greatness comes— and might even come again.”

New learning: “A vukojebina [in Serb-Croat]— employed to describe a remote or barren or arduous place— means literally a ‘wolf-fuck,’ or more exactly the sort of place where wolves retire to copulate.”

New word: inamorata = a person’s female lover. Unless I missed something about West’s sexuality, I think he meant to use the masculine version – inamorato.

 

Wow! That is a big book!

A little break since last post as I was travelling in Russia. Ironic that this would be the next entry.


“Marx’s Journalism: The Grub Street Years”

A review of Dispatches for the New York Tribune: Selected Journalism of Karl Marx, edited by James Ledbetter.

An interesting walk through Karl Marx’s writings as a journalist for the New York Tribune (while living in London) during the 1850s and 60s. Rather then the normal look at Marx’s (along with his collaborator Engels’) influence on the Russian Revolution, it profiles his writing supporting the American Revolution, Abraham Lincoln’s leadership in the U.S. Civil War and the independence of India. Perhaps not surprising to read that Marx was fiercely anti-slavery and a vocal opponent of the trading of Indian opium in China. Hitchen’s makes the assertion that Marx’s greatest writing was, perhaps, as a journalist rather than as co-author of the books that laid the foundation for communist revolution. It would be fait to say that, although Hitchens identifies himself as a Marxist, he would not call him self a communist.

There are no public statues of Soviet era leaders in Moscow but there is this staue of Marx.

New learning: A quote from Marx’s writing, “Voltaire used to call Shakespeare a drunken savage.”

New phrase: pleonasm = the use of more words or word parts than is necessary for clear expression.

“The Dark Side of Dickens”

A review of Michael Slater’s biography Charles Dickens published in 2010. Hitchens compares Slater’s book very unfavorably to earlier biographies (notably Peter Ackroyd’s Dickens from 1990). In the process we learn that Dicken’s work did actually draw directly from his childhood (“the feeble male parent, the death of a sibling, the...school where the master who slashed the boys with a cane”). Hitchens also posits that this childhood may have something to do with “…the very real constraints on Dicken’s legendary compassion.” Hitchens throws in a few anecdotes for illustration. Dickens is “the man who had a poor women arrested for using filthy language in the street” and “made remarks about [blacks] that may have shocked even the pathologically racist [Thomas] Carlyle.” Hitchens compares Dickens unfavorably to his contemporaries, George Eliot in particular, but also acknowledges ‘the first real test is that of spending a long…evening in the alehouses…and here it has to be in the company of Dickens and no one else.” I think, even here, he’s being pejorative in his praise.

New learning: Dickens wrote, in response to the Indian rebellion of 1857, that he would  use all “merciful and swiftness of execution…to exterminate [these people from] the face of the earth.” Nice guy. Interesting blog from Countercurrents on the 200^th anniversary of Dicken’s birth: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya100212.htm.

New phrase: chiaroscuro = the use of strong contrast between light and dark in art.

Interesting note: finishing reading Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise on a flight last night and coincidentally came upon this quote about R.A. Fisher, the early 20^th century English statistician and opponent of Bayesian Statistics, “Fisher was a much more colorful character than Bayes, almost in the English intellectual tradition of Christopher Hitchens. He was handsome but a slovenly dresser, 42 always smoking his pipe or his cigarettes, constantly picking fights with his real and imagined rivals. He was a mediocre lecturer but an incisive writer with a flair for drama, and an engaging and much-sought-after dinner companion.”

“Gustave Flaubert: I’m With Stupide”

A review of Bouvard and Pecuchet, Gustave Flaubert’s final and unfinished novel. Very funny title for this essay. Hitchens describes the book as 19^th century version of the movie Dumb and Dumber. His main issue seems to be that the book is unfinished, unplolished, hugely formulaic and predictable - not up to the standards of the author of Madame Bovary. Hithcens says that “Jorge Luis Borges was of the opinion that Flaubert, the craftsman of the first truly realist novel with Madame Bovary, was also, with Bouvard and Pecuchet, the saboteur of his own project." For all of his issues with the book, he also makes it sound hilarious. I think I’ll add it to my reading list.

New learning: Flaubert was compiling a dictionary called The Dictionary of Received Ideas (Le Dictionnaire des idées recues) satirizing the clichés of French Society. It’s unclear if he intended it to be an appendix to Bouvard and Pecuhet. It was ultimately published posthumously in 1911. An example: “Laurels: keep one from resting.”

New phrase (French): le mot juste = the exact word