“Harry Potter: The Boy Who Lived”

Hitchens’ review of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling. I don’t think Hitchens is trying to be funny (for the most part) but reading his serious review of this book, as if it were a piece of real literature, is hilarious – especially the comparisons to Orwell and Beowulf. He also has a couple of funny quotes:

“Is there really no Death Eater or dementor who is able to grasp the simple advantage of surprise?”

“…every time the secret police close in, our heroes are able to “disapparate”— a term that always makes me think of an attempt at English by George W. Bush.”

New Learning: The lightning flash (like the one on Harry’s forehead) was also the symbol of the British Union of Fascists (1936-1940).

Harry and the BU of Fascist's logo:

Evidently, they also have souvenirs, like Harry Potter:

New word: Wizengamot = wizard high court (in Harry Potter Britain)

“Saki: Where the Wild Things Are”

Hitchens’ review of The Unbearable Saki, by Sandie Byrne.

H.H. Munro (nom de plume “Saki”) was a Victorian writer whose “great gift was being able to write about children and animals.” Hitchens goes on to write “H. H. Munro— or ‘Saki,’ the author of [Beasts and Super-Beasts] — is among those few writers, inspirational when read at an early age, who definitely retain their magic when revisited decades later.”

The stories sound good – Kipling-esque. Saki puts these words in the mouth of his protagonist in the story “The East Wing.” He asserts that after his death, those left behind, “…would no more exist than a vanished puff of cigarette smoke…” Hitchens points out the irony in his close  to the essay, “On the verge of a crater [in WW1], during an interval of combat, he was heard to shout ‘Put that bloody cigarette out!’ before succumbing to the bullet of a German sniper who had been trained to look for such tell-tale signals.”

Saki's story "Tobermory"...about a cat that can talk...waas made into a twitter play.

http://twitterplays.com/?page_id=4

New Learning: Saki took his name from the cupbearer in the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

“And fear not lest Existence closing your Account, and mine, should know the like no more; The Eternal Sáki from that Bowl has pour’d Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.”

New word: ephebes = young man undergoing military training

“Fleet Streets Finest: From Waugh to Frayn”

Hitchens’ ramble through the English novels about journalism (Waugh, Wodehouse, Greene, Frayn, et al). His point seems to be that the old world of Fleet Street (1900 to 1960’s?) is gone and a great source of satirical fiction gone with it. He says of the novels, “the literature of old Fleet Street was to a very considerable extent written by journalists and for journalists.” Sort of what House of God is to internists. He writes in the next to last paragraph, “the lure of television is already beginning to exert its anti-magic.” Very snobbish. Television has, it turns out, created quite a bit of magic over the years including dramatizations of some of the novels he praises in this essay…Scoop, Brideshead Revisited, Jeeves and Wooster…

New Learning: Very funny quote of a reporter’s cable from Waugh’s Scoop, “ LOVELY SPRING WEATHER BUBONIC PLAGUE RAGING”. Even better, real New York Post headline, “Headless Body in Topless Bar.”

Here's a picture of the headline and a link to the book about headlines.

http://www.amazon.com/Headless-Body-Topless-Bar-Headlines/dp/0061340715

New word: tartarean = from the part of the underworld where the wicked suffer for their mis-deeds

“Fraser’s Flashman: Scoundrel Time”

Hitchens’ review of George McDonald Fraser’s latest novel, Flashman and the Tiger, with ample commentary on the entire Flashman Papers. Here again, Hitchens has introduced an author and body of work that is totally new to me. Fraser’s series, fictional memoirs of a 19^th century globe trotting soldier/spy, takes his protagonist all through the key events of the British Empire in the mid to late 1800’s (sort of a “Zelig of high-Victorian imperial history.”)  One interesting point is that Flashman is not a hero at all but, “is a cowering impostor who prefers whoring and bullying to any risking of his skin on the thin red line” with Flashman’s participation in events “an unlucky accident.” Hitchens calls Flashman”…a sadist and a brute as well as a rascally coward and goof-off” and quotes Fraser himself as saying “…he can only display the courage of a cornered rat.”
Hitchens loves the books and they do sound like fun.

Good cover picture of the first novel.

New Learning: Funny quote from Fraser about Tony Blair, “Tony Blair…is not just the worst prime minister we’ve ever had, but by far the worst prime minister we’ve ever had.”

New word: poltroonish = cowardly

“J.G. Ballard: The Catastrophist”

Hitchens’ review of The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard. Not a science fiction fan …“As one who has always disliked and distrusted so-called science fiction (the votaries of this cult disagreeing pointlessly about whether to refer to it as ‘SF’ or ‘sci-fi’)”…Hitchens seems to like Ballard well enough. In addition to his famous novel, Empire of the Sun, Ballard was a prolific writer of short stories with very provocative names, “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered As a Downhill Motor Race”, “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan” and “Plan For the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy”.  Even though “some of the stories are in want of polish and finish”, Hitches writes  “Ballard wrote his heart out” and “…can produce arresting phrases and images” and, also, “…succeed[s] in being dead pan funny.” I don’t think I’ll tackle the entire 1,200 page collection, but sounds like his stories are worth a look. Here is Hitchens’ description of the opening story, “Despite the menacing title of ‘Prima Belladonna [very funny!]’… one is immediately bewitched by the very idea of a flower shop where the gorgeously different blooms are all live stand-ins for musicians and opera singers (such as a “delicate soprano mimosa”) and where the owner of this hard-to-manage “chloro florist” establishment eventually confronts “an audio-vegetative armageddon.”

Crazy.

http://thedailyomnivore.net/2012/05/07/

Link to a couple good reviews of Ballard.

New Learning: Quote from Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britain in 2006, “Most educated people are aware that we are the outcome of nearly 4 billion years of Darwinian selection, but many tend to think that humans are somehow the culmination. Our sun, however, is less than halfway through its lifespan. It will not be humans who watch the sun’s demise, 6 billion years from now. Any creatures that then exist will be as different from us as we are from bacteria or amoebae.“

New word: thanatos = Freudian death wish ( as opposed to eros = the Freudian life instinct)