2012 – Page 63 – Wis[s]e Words

African Trilogy — Alan Moorehead

Published on February 5, 2012Leave a comment

cover of African Trilogy

Mediterranean Front, A Year of Battle, The End in Africa
Alan Moorehead
642 pages including index
published in 1941, 1943,1943, compilation 1945

If journalism is history as first draft, then these three books, Mediterranean Front, A Year of Battle, The End in Africa; published in one volume as African Trilogy are history as second draft. Written while the Second World War was still ongoing, each of these books tell the story of one year of war in the desert, as seen by one of the preeminent war correspondents of the era. Written largely without the benefit of hindsight, from the notes that Moorehead took at the time, these three books together not only provide an interesting look at an important period in World War II, which England largely had to fight on its own, but also at how people at the time thought about the war, when the outcome was by no means certain yet.

If you’ve heard of Alan Moorehead, it’s probably for his post-war books on the exploration of the Nile, The White Nile (1960) and The Blue Nile (1962). During the Second World War he was a correspondent for the Daily Express, following the war in North Africa, the invasion of Sicily and the war in Italy. As becomes clear from reading these three volumes, Moorehead wasn’t one of those journalists content to stay at headquarters, but went chasing down the front whenever he could. Some of the incidents here certainly read like Boy’s Own Adventures stuff, several times barely escaping running into the enemy at several moments. Moorehead is a born raconteur, aimable, slightly understated, though with some of the attitudes and language use of the time that might seem strange to modern readers.

If there was a hell

Published on February 4, 20121 Comment

This is the music they’d play there:

Every now and then though, just to give you false hope, they would play this:

Snowmageddon NL

Published on February 3, 20122 Comments

picture of snowy Amsterdam taken at work

I’ve heard it said that in Texas or California, when the first snowflakes start to fall, every car on the road starts skipping. Whether or not that’s true or not I don’t know, but certainly here in good old Holland, where we pride ourselves on our old fashioned Dutch winters, the first day of snow saw eighthundred kilometers of traffic jams and the complete disarray of the railways. Luckily the metro and buses were still running and I got home with no problems, but I wouldn’t have wanted to travel anywhere outside Amsterdam this weekend…

What amused and annoyed me in equal measures was the reporting in the main news broadcast tonight. First we got a look at the chaos on the road, full with cheerful people stoically commenting on how long it would take them to get home, all accepting that snow in the Netherlands means slippery roads, lower speeds and long long traffic jams. Then we went to the railways and there we only got complaining travellers frustrated about the delays and cancelled trains and how badly the railway people were handling things. Granted, when you’re driving a car you still have some illusion of control while it can be incredibly frustrating when you don’t know when you can travel, how you are going to travel and if you can actually travel in the first place, but the tone of the reporting was meaningful. The same weather that was shown as an act of god in the first item, in the second item was blamed on the railways lack of preparation…

New Watchmen? What’s the point?

Published on February 2, 2012Leave a comment

If DC is so determined to get new Watchmen material out, why not this?

I’m with Andrew Weiss on this; putting out prequels to Watchmen is only slighty less obnoxious than imagining a need for a prequel to Maus, but so much other cultural landmarks, both high and low, have been remade in the past few decades that it was only time before Watchmen got its turn. It’s what happens when “intellectual properties” (ugh) are owned by companies only interested in the next sure thing, the next bestseller, who know full well that whatever internet outrage there is today, many of the same people will end up buying these things anyway, curious as they are to see what a Darwyn Cooke (retro kitsch with little originality) or a J. Michael Straczynski (let’s hope it’s not a long miniseries) will make of it. Few comics fans can tell shit from shinola anyway, not when presented in a $99 Absolute Edition Hardcover.

In the end, what remains impressive is how long it took DC ultimately to throw all their scruples to the wind and do what they’ve been wanting to do ever since Watchmen turned out to be a hit, to do what’s in the company’s DNA, what they always do when they have a hit: exploit the hell out of it and get more like it out there on the stands. It’s what comics publishers have always done, chase the trends, sling shit to the wall and if it sticks, sling more. At the time they barely and only halfhearted recognised that not doing this would be more profitable this time, though not before driving away Moore himself. What DC finally realised was that Watchmen, along with The Dark Knight Returns and Swamp Thing, as well as a handful of lesser titles gave them prestige, a reputation as a the more creator friendly and innovative of the Big Two. They got themselves a boatload of British writers, people like Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison and Pete Milligan et all to repeat the magic that Moore got going with Watchmen, got it with Sandman and ultimately got Vertigo, a whole line of slightly off kilter not quite superhero titles for those who had outgrown the DC universe, the one really smart bit of business DC has gotten together in the past four decades. The rest of the company may have been just as dumb and exploitative as Marvel (who never got as much credit for Epic as DC did for Vertigo) or Image at their worst, but Vertigo made it acceptable.

But the American comics industry still crashed and burned and nobody but Steve Bissette still cares about creators right and self publishing and boycotting Marvel for its treatment of Jack Kirby and its heirs. And Watchmen, which had remained in print and a steady seller for the company all those years turned hot again, what with the movie and everything and the old itch to exploit it better, to get people to not just buy new and more deluxe versions of it popped up again. More than a quarter of a century after its original publication it’s finally safe to give into it, even if it’s pointless. The suits will have their way, the second rate talent making the comics will think they’re making art or doing a homage and that DC will still respect them in the morning, the fans will lap it up anyway.

Books read January

Published on February 1, 2012Leave a comment

And so ends the first month of the last year of the world, if we can believe all those new age hucksters shilling for that supposed Mayan prophecy. I’ll believe it when I see it. Meanwhile this is the start of the fifth year I’ve been doing these monthly roundups, not to mention the eleventh year of my Booklog. Just like happened last year I had to start the new year reading through the backlog of books I’d gotten from the Middelburg library, as I stayed with my parents over Christmas and had gotten more books out than I turned out to be able to read while there — shouldn’t have played so much Colonists of Catan I guess.

I also started a new reading project this month, by working my way through some of Sandra’s favourite books this year. The first of which was Wendy Williams’ Kraken, who in fact left a nice comment at my review, which was appreciated. Not sure which of Sandra’s books I’ll be reading this month, but I’m leaning towards trying one of her gastronomic books, perhaps one of her M. K. Fishers, or a Bemelmans volume, or perhaps Ruth Brandon’s The People’s Chef, which Sandra was raving about a year or so ago.

In the meantime, here are the books I read this month, in order. Eight books in total, mostly non-fiction as I worked my way through that cache of library books.

The King’s Name — Jo Walton
““The first I knew about the civil war was when my sister Aurien poisoned me.” Surely one of the better openings to a fantasy novel and the rest of the book doesn’t disappoint either. Sequel to The King’s Peace.

Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army 1610-1715 — John A. Lynn
An indepth look at the French Army and its soldiers during the century that Louis XIV turned France into the most powerful nation in Europe.

Kraken — Wendy Williams
A short, but interesting look at cephalopods — squid, octopussies, cuttlefish, nautiluses — and their importance for medical research, as well as why they’re just cool in their own right. Sandra loved cephalopods and so do I.

War, State and Society in England and the Netherlands, 1477-1559 — Steven Gunn, David Grummitt & Hans Cools
Not entirely succesfull comparative history of England and what we’d now would call the Benelux or Low Countries, during the period which arguably determined the modern shape of both countries.

Mediterranean Front — Alan Moorehead
If journalism is history as a first draft, this is history as second draft: the experiences of Australian war correspondent Alan Moorehead during the first year of the war in the desert in WWII.

The Crisis of the Twelfth Century — Thomas N. Bisson
In the Long Twelfth Century, here defined from roughly 1066 to the early decades of the thirteenth century, Europe went through a crisis of lordship, as every knight with a castle made himself into a lord. Another dense, thick sociological history, interesting but hard going at times.

City of the Chasch — Jack Vance
A classic Vancian novel, set on the mad world of Tshcai and the first in a tetralogy, infamous for its second entry: Servants of the Wankh… I’ve read this a long long time ago in Dutch.

A Year of Battle — Alan Moorehead
The second book in Alan Moorehead’s Africa trilogy, about the second year of the Desert War, now mostly fought between the British and Commonwealth forces against Rommel.