REVIEW OF ROBERT HUTCHINSON'S ELIZABETH'S SPY MASTER

Much of this book reads with the pace of a well-written novel.

But it suffers from Hutchinson’s excessive use of quoted passages, a practice I regard as pernicious, one often used to pad the size of books.

Hutchinson’s book suffers, too, from his own motives in writing it.

“By right, he should rank with Horatio Nelson, the Duke of Wellington, and even Sir Winston Churchill as one of the great patriotic defenders, against all-comers, of this island state, its monarchs, governments, beliefs and creeds.”

I cannot agree. Here we have a man who said more than once that he could not be effective without torture, one who used the worst forms of torture extensively. He was also a man who plotted the downfall of great figures, including Mary Queen of Scots, with elaborate and devious schemes much in the style of what we would today term “entrapment.”

I am more in agreement when Hutchinson writes of “the numbing fear of that sudden Gestapo-like knock at the door from Walsingham’s questing pursuivants.”

Walsingham was an extraordinarily intelligent man and very talented at what he did. Those who are familiar with Elizabeth I know she did not suffer fools gladly and had a group of advisors and servants of extraordinary ability, so Walsingham’s skills are as we would expect.

But Walsingham was, like so many Puritans, a true fanatic, relentless in his pursuits, reminding the modern reader in many respects of dark figures in the Cold War or of the immortal and horrible, Inspector Javert.

Hutchinson’s greatest fault is overstating the importance of Walsingham’s contribution, crediting him, among other things, with England’s success against Spain’s Great Armada. This, it seems to me, is both a misreading of history and a dangerous error for people’s understanding of parallel situations in today’s world, the War on Terror having many similarities with the Elizabethan crusade against a re-establishment of Catholicism.

Elizabeth’s period has been a favourite of mine for years, and I believe strongly that it is a serious misreading of history to say that Walsingham’s intelligence was crucial to victory over the Great Armada. The Armada project was doomed from the start for the simple reason that Philip II of Spain did not have the resources to carry it off.

Philip was spending his treasure in every direction – fighting Turks in the Mediterranean, fighting a war in the Netherlands, running his inquisitions, and many other vast expenses - a treasure that was under constant attack by magnificent rascals like Sir Francis Drake, and he simply never had enough resources to succeed with the Armada. The Pope failed to deliver any significant resources, offering only talk and a fairly modest reward – modest in relation to the size of the project – payable upon the actual invasion of England.

The key to the invasion was landing the forces of the ferocious Duke of Alva from the Netherlands on the coast of England. Philip never had the beginning of enough ships for the secure passage of 30,000 heavily armed troops. The Armada’s main naval force, launched from Spain, was to meet up with Alva’s men on small boats launched from the coast of the Netherlands, an impossible task, especially given England’s naval forces, daring tactics, and superior naval technology, both in fast and manoeuvrable ships and in more accurate cannon.

Indeed, first class intelligence – intelligence of the purely information-gathering and analysis kind, as opposed to the intelligence of dark operations – would have concluded that.

It is creepily interesting to read of Walsingham’s career and exploits – interesting, that is, removed as we are by centuries of progress in human freedoms.

You will see here, in the events of more than four centuries ago, the kind of thinking and fear and paranoia we have experienced again in recent years under Bush’s War on Terror, although I think it safe to say that the intensity of fear and hatred was greater in Walsingham’s day.

Definitely worth reading, so long as readers are aware of its limits.

CHUCKMAN'S THAI CURRY SHRIMP & CHUCKMAN'S THAI-INFLUENCED SPINACH SALAD

CHUCKMAN’S THAI CURRY SHRIMP

I love Thai food, but is there any Asian cuisine I don’t love? This dish is not authentic, but it will please lovers of Thai food, and it will please lovers of shrimp, especially those who love shrimp done with hot sauces – it is one of the tastiest shrimp dishes I know.
INGREDIENTS:

Shrimp – About 20 Large - never use pre-cooked which heat to rubberiness – use uncooked, fresh or frozen

Red Curry Paste – 1 Tablespoon - either store-bought or make your own – found in most Asian grocery stores and many supermarkets

Red Pepper Flakes – A generous sprinkling depending on how hot you want the dish

Pad Thai Concentrate – 1 Tablespoon - available at most Asian grocery stores

Thai Fish Sauce – 2 Teaspoons – available at most Asian grocery stores and many supermarkets

Lemon Juice – Juice of ½ a lemon – the equivalent in lime may also be used

Coarse Black Pepper – 2 Teaspoons

Coarse Sea Salt – 1 rounded Teaspoon

Oil – A few Tablespoons – enough to make a thick marinade - Canola is ideal

NOTE: Ingredient proportions are approximate because I cook this dish without measuring. Adjust to your taste.


METHOD:

Thaw Shrimp if frozen, leaving a short while in cold water, then peel.

Mix all other ingredients – except for Salt and half of Pepper – and stir into shrimp as a marinade. Let marinade at least an hour.

Oil sauté pan and heat to high, sprinkling with reserved Salt and Pepper. Quickly sauté shrimp, tossing as you cook. Remove from pan when shrimp are nice and pink.

These may be eaten over rice noodles or as is.
___________________________

The following Spinach Salad is excellent with the shrimp.


CHUCKMAN’S THAI-INFLUENCED SPINACH SALAD

INGREDIENTS:

Dressing:

Thai Hot Chilli Sauce – 3 Tablespoons - this is the sweet/hot bottled sauce Thai people use as a condiment

Rice Vinegar – 2 Tablesppons

Pepper Flakes – light sprinkling

Oil – Canola is excellent – enough to make a dressing

Fresh Ginger – about a thumb-end - finely chopped


Salad Greens:

Fresh Shredded Spinach or Baby Spinach - always wash spinach well

Sweet Red Pepper - sliced thinly or into matchsticks

Red Onion – sliced thinly

NOTE: some fresh bean sprouts would also be nice.


METHOD:

Shake dressing ingredients in a capped bottle. Toss greens together in a bowl. Dress when serving.

REVIEW OF JAMES DOUGLASS'S JFK AND THE UNSPEAKABLE

Let me make my perspective clear in reviewing this book: I am a complete sceptic of the official story of Kennedy’s assassination . As well, I have been a fierce critic of the Warren Commission whose work was riddled with flaws and whose only investigation was wholly adopted from J. Edgar Hoover, a man who loathed the Kennedys and had several motives for hiding the truth, including Oswald’s (almost certain) embarrassing work as a paid FBI informant right up to the end.

It always amazes me when I confront the reality of a whole new generation of readers who appear, from their embrace of books like this, to be so completely unfamiliar with what has gone before. But of course that perspective is true in so many things: the Vietnam War, a pointless bloodbath which determined much of the course of my life and that of millions of others, is almost unknown to young people today if polls are to be believed.

That said, James Douglass’s book was a great disappointment. I had expected from some reviews, including one by Oliver Stone, as well as from the fact that Douglass is an experienced author, albeit of religious books, a significant contribution to the assassination literature.

But no critical mind familiar with the assassination literature could possibly regard this book as a contribution.

Every witness ignored by the Warren Commission or those whose testimony was twisted by Hoover’s FBI (and there were many) has been heard from in nearly forty-six years of books and articles. I accept the validity of a number of these witnesses, and, very importantly, I embrace Bertrand Russell’s profound question on the assassination: "If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?"

Douglass, in his most successful passages in terms of suspense (undoubtedly, part of his appeal) presents once again a relatively small selection of these, letting readers assume they are getting these stories as new revelations. What is most regrettable is that Douglass includes and emphasizes a couple of the least credible witnesses, while leaving out other interesting, far more credible ones.

Douglass takes the idea of an Oswald double to new heights, quoting the more far-fetched witnesses, as seeing a man who was virtually his double. For those who’ve read the assassination literature, there is no doubt that there was at least one individual vaguely fitting Oswald’s description who was used by the conspirators as a means of spreading legends about Oswald’s activities, but we know from several pieces of evidence that he was no actual double.

Douglass offers nothing new on any of the most critical events around the assassination, including the remarkable activities of George de Mohrenschildt, former-FBI Agent Guy Banister’s operations in New Orleans, and Oswald’s supposed trip to Mexico City, absolute keys to understanding. He sorts out nothing new on these or other vital topics.

Why on earth does Douglass in the early part of his book spend time on an obscure a monk named Thomas Merton? It seems Merton inspired Douglass’s thoughts, but if you read between the lines of Douglass on Merton you find something close to ridiculous, a monk whose hobby was writing long letters to very famous public figures and who published a collection of these.

Douglass carefully avoids dealing with the fact of whether any of these people read Merton’s letters, or even opened them, or ever responded. The picture that emerges is one of a highly eccentric man one would not want to quote in the beginning of a book on a serious subject.

Again, of all the past books on the assassination, Douglass quotes some of the least interesting and credible, including the ponderous and, for me, seemingly delusional, The Man Who Knew Too Much, the supposed experiences of one Richard Case Nagell. Douglass never mentions the most important investigative book ever written on the topic, Anthony Summers’ Conspiracy, a work of immense credibility.

I have often written, when criticizing the many dishonest anti-conspiracy books which have appeared over the years (many of them undoubtedly financed or at least juiced-up by the CIA and its American media allies), that until we have new evidence, we are unable to make the kind of pat conclusions such books make.

We know only to a near certainty that Oswald did not shoot at Kennedy, that Oswald found himself (as an FBI informer) caught up in a series of elaborate plots with which he was not familiar, that no assassination of this nature takes place without considerable resources and planning, that Kennedy’s key wound was inflicted from the front, and that the official agencies, for whatever reason, have hidden what truth they know and certainly some key files.

This book is simply unsatisfying on many levels: read it only if you enjoy carnival side-shows.

Readers interested in my analysis of the assassination may find it in the published pieces, Forty Years of Lies and Lincoln Was Wrong. You’ll find both of them on any of several sites, including Chuckman’s Words On Wordpress.

CHUCKMAN'S SUKIYAKI

CHUCKMAN’S SUKIYAKI
I love Japanese food in general, but this dish is one of my favourite meals from any cuisine. It offers a complete, delicious meal from one pot. It’s all preparation and little cooking.


INGREDIENTS:

1 ½ pounds of Beef – decent steak like top sirloin is good – sliced into very thin strips – Tip: slice steak when partially frozen to get best results, or use a good long scissor

Shirataki Mushrooms – about 6 to 8, depending on size – caps sliced thinly, stems not used - fresh or dried – if you use dry, soak in warm water for half an hour before cutting

Bok Choi – 1 large stalk or equivalent Baby Bok Choi – Greens sliced thinly, leave white bottom for a future recipe

1 pound soft Tofu – break up with fingers until little chunks like cottage cheese

Scallions – 4 large – sliced very thinly

Onion – 1 large – sliced very thinly

½ cup Soy Sauce – Kikkoman’s distinctive flavour is best for this

½ cup Sake

1 Tbsp sugar or sugar substitute

Togarashi – Japanese Red Pepper powder – available in any decent Asian grocery and even some supermarkets

Soba (Japanese buckwheat) Noodles – 3 or 4 of the little bundles as they typically come packaged

Oil sufficient for cooking a stir fry


METHOD:

Prepare sauce, combining Soy Sauce, Sake, and Sugar and set aside.

Place Noodles – remove little plastic ties first - into a medium pot of boiling water. Cook just a couple of minutes – they are very thin - and drain. Oil very lightly to keep from clumping and set aside.

Lightly oil large frying pan and cook Onion slices until translucent. Add Beef slices and Mushroom slices, cooking an additional minute or two stirring as you fry. Add Bok Choy and cook briefly until reduced by water loss. Add Tofu and Scallions and Sauce. Simmer briefly.

Add Noodles, stirring into mixture.

This ready to serve as soon as well mixed except for the Togarashi powder. I consider it essential, but some do not use it. By leaving it until last, you can customize plates.


NOTES:

Traditional Japanese people eat Sukiyaki with a raw egg on top.

Soba Noodles are not the noodles traditionally used, but I like them very much, and they are much easier to find than the more exotic noodles made from sweet potato which even many Asian grocers do not carry.

Togarashi is zesty but not hot.

Japanese Ginger (Sushi) Pickles, for me, go with Sukiyaki the way a big dill pickle goes with a corned-beef sandwich. Serve them cold on the side.

You may also make Sukiyaki with chicken.

CHUCKMAN’S FRESH CORN SALAD WITH MEXICAN FLAVORS

CHUCKMAN’S FRESH CORN SALAD
A delicious way to use fresh corn

SALAD:
4 Cobs of fresh Corn
1 medium Zucchini quartered lengthwise and sliced thinly
1 small Red Sweet Pepper diced finely
1 medium Red Onion finely chopped
2 Stalks Celery finely sliced

DRESSING:
1 Lime – zest and juice – use two limes if you want a strong Lime flavor
2 Tbls Rice Vinegar
1 Tbls Chilli Powder
Tabasco sauce – several shakes or to taste
Fresh Cilantro – several sprigs finely chopped
Oil sufficient for a dressing - at least 2:1 to acids

Sea Salt coarse

METHOD:

Cut corn off cleaned cobs. Combine with other chopped vegetables and set aside.

Mix dressing but leave until ready to serve salad so that Lime does not dehydrate vegetables. Sprinkle coarse Salt when serving.

NOTE: I use old glass spice bottles with screw tops to mix dressings, putting in ingredients, closing top, and shaking vigorously. Works nicely, and you can store any leftover.

REVIEW OF PETER GREEN'S ALEXANDER TO ACTIUM

Here indeed is a difficult book to review: it is so obviously a work of impressive scholarship, yet it has a number of notable shortcomings.

The comment has been made in other reviews that Green is an elegant writer, but I believe that only superficial readers or the author's friends and associates would say that. Green's writing has important and obvious flaws that prevent the book from being what it might have been.

While he sometimes offers elegant sentences, he too often offers convoluted sentences or sentences stuffed like long, fat sausages, sometimes even diverging from the subject in the course of setting down his words. He also maintains a rather superior gesturing in his prose. I know the effect Green likely hoped he was achieving - the majesty of Edward Gibbon or Thomas Macaulay - but he just does not succeed.

He is often an extremely pedantic writer, generously sprinkling his text with words and phrases not just from Greek and Latin but German and French, and always selecting obscure words or Latinisms where solid Anglo-Saxon words would serve better.

There are indeed times when a foreign expression captures the special sense of a concept that a translation may loose, and I have no objection to their use where that is true, but that is not the case here.

I very much object to the gratuitous use of foreign words and phrases to display an author's learning, something which makes the work less accessible to many while simply annoying others with a gimmick related to the use of "as the eminent, such-and-such prize-winner once said..." to bolster a quoted source's authority (something Green spares us). The effects are poisonous in a work of this nature.

Yet Green knows a great deal about his subject, and I certainly learned from him despite the faults. His interpretation of the Hellenistic world after Alexander as representing a decay and gradual departure from (reaching almost a bastardization of) Greece's true classical period is interesting, and he mounts some strong supporting evidence for the view.

The book is not properly understood as a history, because large portions of it are arguments of positions on historical or philosophical or esthetic or moral issues. There's nothing wrong with that, but potential readers should be aware of the fact.

There is such a huge cast of characters involved in the three great divisions of Alexander's conquests over a couple of centuries that one loses track of some of them in the narrative, many of course being minor or simply having left few records, but one might have hoped for a clearer, more sustained narrative of the truly important figures. There is a sense of fragmentation here which may be just the fault of a fragmentary record.

There is a considerable difference in Green's success in explaining some events. He sometimes leaves you mentally saying, "Yes, indeed," while other times he leaves you saying, "What?"

Despite the flaws, this is a significant book and one worth reading by anyone interested in the Hellenistic era and in the successors to the dead Alexander and in the rise of imperial Rome.

REVIEW OF ARNALDUR INDRIDASON'S ARCTIC CHILL

I am not a traditionally a reader of mysteries, but since my wife introduced me to selected writers, there are a few to whose new books I quite look forward.

Scandinavian writers of this genre appeal a great deal. After all, part of what we get from any novel is being taken into a world we do not know, and the place and people names of Scandinavia are exotic and fascinating. Also, there is a great touch of humanity in the stories coming from Scandinavian writers, quite in distinction to some well-known, hard-boiled American writers whose fiction I find almost unreadable.

Norway's Karin Fossum is chief among the Scandinavians, being a writer and storyteller of top quality, but I enjoy Iceland's Arnaldur Indridason too. His first books were not in the same class with Fossum's, but with Arctic Chill, he rises to a new level of quality. This is fine and gripping book, an interesting tale with many twists and turns.

Indridason weaves several plots together here and manages them with great skill. The two criminal cases - a murder and a separate missing person - actually nicely reinforce each other and are used to introduce some interesting complexities.

Indridason is always a clear writer, but this book introduces a new level of sophistication in his storytelling. We still have his intelligent, very human, and sympathic detective, Erlendur, a man with whom we feel it might be nice to spend some time discussing the human condition. We still have the wonderfully forbidding weather and brooding landscape of Iceland as major characters.

This is a book you will not want to put down. Highly recommended.

CHUCKMAN'S ZESTIEST LENTIL SOUP

MY ZESTIEST LENTL SOUP

1 Pound dry Red Lentils
2 Boxes Beef Stock
1 pound of Spanish Chorizo Sausage – Sweet – sliced thinly
1 large Onion - diced
1 large Green Pepper - diced
2 medium Carrots – sliced thinly
2 stalks of Celery – sliced thinly
Hungarian Sweet Paprika – at least two tablespoons, more if you like
Salt – to taste
Pepper – coarsely ground – at least 1 teaspoon

Bring a medium pot of water to boil and add Lentils. Boil for 5 minutes. Drain with a strainer and add to the Beef Stock in a large soup pan.

Saute Onions and Carrots until softened. Add Green Pepper and Celery to cook a briefer time. Add Paprika to vegetables and continue cooking a brief time to work in all the Paprika with oil and cook through.

Add Onions, Carrots, Green Pepper, Celery to pot of Beef Stock.

Add Chorizo slices to frying pan and briefly sauté. Then add to Stock. Add pepper.

Simmer for at least fifteen minutes, longer if you like something closer to a porridge consistency with much softened vegetables.

Great with yogourt.

REVIEW OF SEBASTIAN FAULKS' BIRDSONG

This is a difficult book to review, the reason being is that it has so many contradictory qualities. It has some good writing combined with material that is sentimental and even purplish.

It has some strong images, and it has a series of preposterous incidents. It is packed with improbabilities.

The author starts with a mini-version of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," oddly hybridized with Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover." While there is some nice writing here, it strikes me as self-consciously so, and the story lacks any freshness.

There are ridiculous improbabilities in this part of the book. Why would an English firm considering a business venture with a French firm send this young man, the protagonist, Stephen, to size up the opportunity? He isn't even educated in business. He is very young. And he proves emotionally unstable.

And why would the French proprietor - M. Azaire, husband of the beautiful woman, Isabelle, who becomes Stephen's lover - have Stephen spending time at lunches and other business of the floor workers in his plant? It's a genuinely silly idea.

The sentimentality begins shortly after Stephen and Isabelle become lovers, and, in cheap romantic fashion, Isabelle suddenly disappears with their young child, returning to her family.

When you get into the Great War, supposedly the real stuff of the book, you will wonder why you've had about ninety pages of rehashed Madame Bovary. You will find out towards the end, but it is a very unsatisfying idea of neatness and completeness that drives things.

Here and there in the war business, there are a few strong images and interesting stuff about the tunnel systems that were extensively used in the Great War.

But the author even manages to make the front sentimental and clichéd. Egad, there's even the proverbial friend who has never been with a woman and who is given the surprise present of a prostitute one night.

There's lots of hard drinking and calculatedly gruesome incidents - pure Hollywood. And the author has nothing fresh to say about the war we haven't all seen in movies or read in other books.

The end-of-war portion was clearly written with the hope of selling the book for movie rights. The idea of two men trapped in a huge tunnel far underground is gruesomely interesting, but the author draws it out to impossibly long time with an impossibly heroic series of efforts. People typically die after 3 or 4 days without water, but Stephen hangs in there for God knows how long.

Yes, he licks a bit of brackish water in a corner in his Herculean labors, but that just wouldn't do it.

His rescue would have been a good surprise - he is rescued by Germans digging in their own lines - had it been handled well. But we get an awkward effort by a couple of Germans, one of whom, we have explained at some length and repetition, happens to be Jewish. Why? Why is the author suddenly focusing on a man's religion? An intended irony about a good Jewish soldier in the German army? Whatever the intention, it simply does not work.

The ending is silly, the author bringing us what he regards as full circle.

I really do believe Faulks thought he was writing a racier, more action-filled "Gone with the Wind" for World War I in hope of a big movie contract.

I read this book wanting to like it, thinking from things I read that it might be another of those memorable books about people caught in the gears of war, but I found it impossibly flawed.

REVIEW OF DAVID HACKETT FISCHER'S CHAMPLAIN'S DREAM

Not every historical character is so lucky in his biographer as Samuel de Champlain is in David Hackett Fischer. Fischer has tremendous good will and sympathy towards his subject, and that always makes a biography more pleasurable to read.

Champlain was an explorer, a mapmaker, an artist, a writer, a capable captain of people in difficult circumstances, an idealist, a seasoned soldier, and person of extraordinarily good temperament. In short, he was a French version of the fabled Elizabethan man, and with qualities of character superior to many Elizabethan men.

This is a very good book: it has a genuinely heroic subject in Champlain, and it tells a great story in vigorous language.

Fischer follows in part the example of Samuel Eliot Morison's "Admiral of the Ocean Sea," a venerable though somewhat dated biography of Columbus, by using his personal knowledge of sailing and the contemporary geography of Champlain’s New France to bring vivid life to his story and explain matters like the naming of certain places. Since I too know and have lived in some of these areas, I found this fascinating.

His treatment of the Indians of New France is refreshingly honest yet sympathetic, much in the spirit of Champlain himself, and by honest I’m including the very brutal aspects of aboriginal society sometimes overlooked today in sentimental history.

The book’s shortcomings are relatively small. Fischer is repetitive in small quantities at times, repeating some fact or observation offered not many pages before. This surely is the fault of a somewhat slack editor.

Another fault is in the somewhat poor reproduction of many illustrations, including a number of Champlain’s own drawings.

Fischer also does not tell us enough about certain matters such as Champlain’s marriage, a fascinating subject involving as it does a woman from a fairly distinguished French family who comes and spends time in New France. He briefly tells us how the marriage goes through ups and downs, but any reader will want a few more details filled in, if indeed such material exists in the records.

A significant book for Canadian history, the history of North American settlement and exploration, the history of North American aboriginal people, and all lovers of good biography and good yarns.

REVIEW OF RUSS BAKER'S FAMILY OF SECRETS

This is one of those books which, while not being great, is nevertheless of some value.

Baker takes the point of view that it is impossible to write a book about George W. Bush without writing also about his father. I agree: George Junior would not ever have amounted to more than a small-time failure at business in Texas without his father's friends and influence.

The dual approach has certainly been taken before, a favorite father-and-son biography of mine being Anthony Cave Brown's Treason in the Blood about master-spy Kim Philby and his remarkable father, Harry St. John Philby.

But the parallels do not continue. George Junior is not a figure of personal achievement or significant talent; Kim Philby very much was, whatever you think of his treasonous work. Harry St. John was almost a character from Shakespeare; Bush pere is a fairly uninteresting, but intelligent, government-service lifer from a wealthy family. Brown's book is masterly; Baker's only interesting and competent.

I think Baker failed to investigate some of these matters adequately. For example, I, along with many others, do not believe Bush Junior either bright or hard-working enough to have earned a place in the prestigious universities he attended, much less graduate. He was certainly what is called a "legacy" student: someone who does not make the grade but is given a pass in the hope his wealthy family will contribute generously to the endowment fund. This is a common practice at "ivy league" universities, one of whose constant aims is their own perpetuation as institutions.

The main fact about Bush pere Baker attempts to establish is that he has a lifelong association with the Central Intelligence Agency. He does not prove this, but I think he offers strong circumstantial grounds for a reasonable assumption.

Bush pere's C.I.A. connection was not news for me: being in the past a serious student of the Kennedy assassination, I knew Bush pere's name came up in the long and costly secret war against Castro's Cuba. Also, the C.I.A.'s headquarters at Langley, Virginia, is named after Bush pere, and that kind of honor isn't granted for serving one quite short stint as Director.

I found the first half of the book a bit slow-moving. The pace picks up in the second half, and while Baker never achieves a consistent level of fascinating story-telling, some events are beautifully summed up. He does a handsome job, for example, with the story behind the story that cost Dan Rather his job at CBS News over documents purporting to prove Bush's shabby record with the National Guard in Texas.

There is a mistake or two here, but they are minor. Baker says Lewis "Scooter" Libby was pardoned, but, in fact, Bush only granted clemency on Libby's sentence. His conviction stands, despite the efforts behind the scenes of Dick Cheney, whose dirty work he did, to get him a pardon.

But then Bush never was one much for pardons, or compassion for that matter.

REVIEW OF NICHOLSON BAKER'S HUMAN SMOKE

This is an odd book: its format is less like a book than a research folder or elaborate clipping file for the writing of a more conventional history. Its subject is undoubtedly controversial for some because it makes strong statements about the nature of modern war and it questions the clarity with which we traditionally define the heroes and villains in that vast human enterprise in destruction called World War II.

The book consists of a long series of quotes from all kinds of documents and publications and from famous people. The quotes go in time sequence leading up to and during World War II, and they are selected and orchestrated to make important points about modern war.

The points made here are so difficult for some to accept that I believe the author wanted to use a method that excluded his own voice, offering only the actual words of those who lived the history. In the end, the book has a powerful impact and its title nicely captures what it is about.

As a student of history, I did not find eyebrow-raising facts here, although particular quotes were startling, but I know many will not have been exposed to the disgusting facts of modern warfare. I have long believed, and I wrote an essay on the subject a few years ago, that the methods of modern warfare render the term terrorism meaningless. America or Israel today routinely kills far more civilians than soldiers. You simply cannot use horrible weapons and methods like napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, or carpet-bombing without doing this.

The author makes the point strongly - and I do think it an important one - that it was not Hitler who started the indiscriminate bombing of civilians but the British. He shows Churchill's history of advocating gruesome destruction for enemies of the British Empire. This part of Churchill was less than valiant and less than honourable and had little to do with the values of democracy.

More generally, the conclusion emerges inexorably that there are no heroes in the gruesome business of turning war into something that targets civilians more than armies.

REVIEW OF ALEKSANDR FURSENKO'S AND TIMOTHY NAFTALI'S KHRUSCHEV'S COLD WAR

This book is a gripping read, and it contains new insights into the Cold War, and the authors add some interesting brushstrokes to our historical portrait of Krushchev.

Khrushchev has always been a minor hero of mine. I call him a minor hero because one cannot talk about heroism in an unqualified way with a major figure of an absolute government. Beethoven angrily re-titled the dedication of the Eroica symphony, and I agree with his sentiments in doing it, yet it remains possible to admire some aspects of Napoleon's career.

All individuals must be judged with an appreciation for the constraints under which they operated, and Khrushchev did some very important things and maintained a kind of idealism, despite its rough peasant expression. Khrushchev did want his people to achieve a better life; he cared a great deal about improving agriculture; he was a sincere believer in the ultimate benefits of socialism; he did not want war; and he did want peaceful coexistence with the West before that phrase became commonplace. Above all, Khrushchev was and remains a very human figure, something that cannot be said of a great many absolute leaders.

Khrushchev's role in changing the operations of the Soviet government after decades of Stalin - perhaps the most terrifying dictator of the modern era - was heroic, something I believe he has never been adequately recognized for in the West.

But the same man was ready to crush revolt in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

The title of the book is absolutely accurate: this is Khrushchev's Cold War. Other actors enter and leave the stage, but Khrushchev shapes the story. In that sense, it is necessarily incomplete as a history of the Cold War.

The new insights in the book come from Soviet archives not opened until well into the 21st century. They include who knew what when; the impact of certain events on the Soviet leadership; the real reasons for certain Soviet positions in international affairs; and some of the misunderstandings of American analysts and leaders at the time.

In a few cases, the authors indicate that materials are missing yet, so the book cannot be taken as definitive.

But the book is indispensable to understanding the Cold War, aspects of how the Soviet Union worked, and the Cuban Missile crisis. It is recommended to all with interest in these subjects and to anyone just wanting a good historical read.

CHUCKMAN: ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF

CHUCKMAN'S SAVORY MIDDLE-EAST STYLE STUFFED PEPPERS

CHUCKMAN’S SAVORY MIDDLE-EAST STYLE STUFFED PEPPERS

INGREDIENTS:

2 Cups Dry Couscous (Whole wheat or regular)

2 Cups Chicken Broth for Couscous (You will obtain this from the Chicken you cook)

1 Cup or more Chicken Stock for Sauce (You will obtain this from the Chicken you cook)

2 medium Onions

1 or 2 Carrots

4 Legs and Thighs of Chicken

Chatta – Pepper Paste from the Mideast (This is not hot, it is savory - available at any Middle East grocer)

4 Large Green (or Red) Sweet Peppers

Oil – for frying

1 Tablespoon Corn Starch (dissolved in a small quantity of water – for moderately thickening Sauce)

Tomato - a handful diced

METHOD:

Simmer Chicken pieces in a large saucepan of water until flesh easily pulled off.

Take out Chicken and let cool a bit. Set aside liquid (your Stock).

To prepare Couscous, boil 2 Cups of Stock (liquid from cooking Chicken), add dry Coucous, stir together, cover, and remove from burner. Couscous is ready in 5 minutes.

When cool enough to work with, shred Chicken meat, removing skin.

Finely slice or dice Onions and grate Carrot. Saute in a frying pan. Add several Tablespoons of Pepper Paste. When Onion is soft, add shredded Chicken and just warm through.

Stir together Chicken, Onion, and Carrot mix into prepared Couscous.

Halve and seed Green Peppers. Place on small baking sheet (covered with parchment paper, or oiled), or use Pyrex casserole dish, oiled. Pile up with Couscous mix. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for about an hour.

Prepare Sauce on stovetop. Use desired quantity of Chicken Stock, adding several Tablespoons of Chatta paste, a quantity of chopped Tomato, and a generous sprinkling of dry parsley. Add Corn Starch and water mix. Simmer covered for half an hour.

Pepper filling will be lightly browned. Serve as is with Sauce on the side.

NOTES:

Also serve Yogurt on the side, if desired (very nice).

The Coucous/Chicken filling mixture is delicious on its own – a kind of West Asian fried rice.


OTHER INTERESTING INGREDIENTS:

For the Couscous/chicken filling include: pieces of thinly sliced lemons that have been quickly sautéed, sliced (canned) artichoke hearts, olives, or pistachios.

REVIEW OF LAURA THOMPSON'S AGATHA CHRISTIE: AN ENGLISH MYSTERY

I enjoyed an interview with Laura Thompson on CBC Radio, and I thought her biography of Agatha Christie might well be good reading, even though I am not a fan of its subject.

I enjoy any first-rate biography, and the times Ms. Christie lived through are loaded with interesting events and people. She was moreover a remarkable literary phenomenon, becoming a house-hold name, setting record runs for plays, and creating two unforgettable characters - Miss Marple and M. Poirot.

Reading the first few pages of this book, I was sure that I had been right: this was going to be a fine book. In these pages, Ms Thompson creates almost a prose-poem around the idyllic time in Ms. Christie's childhood.

But my illusion gradually faded: the book is a weak one, having a number of faults.

First, Ms. Thompson uses a huge number of quotes from Ms. Christie, to such an extent I regard them as padding. I don't object to using quotes in the fashion Ms. Thompson does, I just object to the sheer volume of them.

Second, Ms. Thompson, time and again, refers to this or that old photograph, making some special observations about them, but virtually none of these photographs is included in the book's selection of photos.

Third, Ms. Thompson appears to have done a weak job of research on some topics, as for example the crucial one around Ms. Christie's first husband leaving her. I think the questions readers have around that event, and there are many, are left not answered.

Fourth, the sense and drama of history is largely missing from a book covering a remarkable era.

The book is a real disappointment.

BOOK REVIEW OF JAMES AND BEN LONG'S THE PLOT AGAINST PEPYS

This book is very good narrative history; in parts, it is truly excellent.

The period of English history from the Restoration of the Stuarts in the person of Charles II, 1660, to the Glorious Revolution, the overthrow of James II, younger brother of Charles in 1688, is a fascinating one, and the events of this book take place during a portion of that period.

The immediate background to these events includes the English Civil War and the rise and fall of the Cromwells. It is a time marked by an extreme turmoil over religion, Protestant versus Catholic, in the affairs of state. Ironically, the period covered was also one of considerable and fairly open decadence in English society, showing once again how little religion has to do with morals.

This book has as chief characters Samuel Pepys and one of the lesser-known nasty pieces of work in modern history, John Scott. With a cast like that, you almost cannot miss.

Pepys, famous for a diary, which is a fact-filled look at part of the period's society and a somewhat salacious record of its morals, was an able and conscientious (at least after the Restoration) civil servant who rose to high rank. The important part of his career was associated with the Royal navy, going from Clerk of the Acts to the Navy to Secretary to the Admiralty Board and finally to Secretary for the Affairs of the Admiralty.

Scott was a lifelong fraudster, murderer, and opportunist who rose up and fell down several times in several countries. With "the gift of the gab," a talent for forgery, and great energy in his schemes, Scott was almost certainly a psychopathic personality. He crossed paths - and as it happens, swords - with Pepys virtually by accident. His unquenchable hatred of Pepys apparently was sparked by a random event in which Pepys, just doing his official duty, thwarted one of Scott's high-flown schemes for gaining fame and fortune. His intense hatred was then harnessed by those interested in the overthrow of Charles II, especially Lord Shaftsbury, himself a considerably larger-than-life and rather grotesque figure.

Pepys was charged with being a secret Catholic and being part of a plot to kill the King and see a Catholic Monarchy installed. The main accuser was the psychopathic John Scott. A modern reader might think that this seems such a simple matter to clear up - especially the part about being a Catholic, which Pepys was not - but there was an atmosphere thickly charged with paranoia and suspicion in England at the time, and it was being actively added to by people like Shaftsbury, himself interested in turning over the existing monarchy.

Because this period was also one of a rapidly changing balance of power between Parliament and the Crown, the King and his brother - the future James II - were not in a position to simply lift a loyal public servant from extreme danger. Pepys spent a long and exhausting period fighting charges that already had seen notable prisoners hung, cut down alive, castrated, disemboweled, and drawn-and-quartered - the contemporary penalty for treason, a penalty which itself tells us something of the frenzied paranoia of the time. He was in and out of prison, had many court dates, and spent a small fortune collecting evidence and trying to understand the precise nature of the plot against him, although he had understood immediately that it was part of some unknown larger effort to get at the Stuarts.

Ultimately he was victorious, but only because he was smart, had considerable resources to employ, and enjoyed a few lucky brakes with past associate or victims of Scott's coming forward from various countries, and, most importantly, the King finally felt comfortable enough reaching down with limited but indispensable help.

The first part of this book reads like a rip-roaring crime novel, but it may be enjoyed on several levels. The English paranoia of the time and the dark operations of the courts in matters of treason remind one very much of the insane swirl of events in America following 9/11. Pepys could almost be an American secret prisoner under the deliberately misnamed Patriot Act. The almost unbelievable career of John Scott reminds one of the way career killers and abusers are so rarely caught even today before they have done immense damage to others. The meek definitely do not inherit the earth still.

AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT - A CONTEMPORARY CHRISTMAS TALE

AND TO ALL, A GOOD NIGHT
A Contemporary Christmas Tale

John Chuckman

It was only a matter of time before Santa Claus himself came under the Neanderthal-eyed scrutiny of American intelligence. After all, Santa’s citizenship is unknown, and he crosses borders with no passport or other form of identification. No one knows whether he even has a valid pilot’s license.

Although his image is well known, there is no official photograph on file with American border control, and he has never been fingerprinted or body-searched. Most disconcerting of all, he delivers parcels to children all over the world, including the children living in the Axis of Evil. His intentions with this activity are not understood beyond some fuzzy generalization about kindness and generosity to all. Clearly, here was the world’s largest unplugged pipeline to potential terrorists.

It was only after receiving no response to several urgent letters from the State Department requesting an immediate meeting in Washington that a decision was made to approach Santa’s North Pole solitude. As usual in such matters with the people now running America, a wing of America’s most lethal killing machines was employed for the purpose. You never know what you might encounter in such a forbidding place.

As the planes first zoomed over the icy silence of the North Pole workshop, one of the pilots decided to swoop down for a closer look. He was one of those daring fly-boys, and his tail struck the only wire for thousands of miles around, the North Pole Telegraph, sending his plane hurling into the workshop in a ball of flames with tons of ammunition and missiles exploding.

Santa and Mrs. Claus rushed out of their snow-blanketed gingerbread house to see what was happening, trying to calm the terrified reindeer running from their stable at one end of the house. The elves, too, scurried towards the stable, trying to stop the reindeer from running or flying off.

Above, in the dark vault of sky, the other pilots observed the explosion and saw missile trails smoking into the air. They also saw the frantic activity below and quickly concluded their comrade had come under anti-aircraft attack. So they swooped down in attack formation, rapid-fire canon tearing into everything ahead of them.

Most of the reindeer fell in the snow, spurting warm blood across the bluish-white surface. Most of the elves, too, fell gasping for life. Mrs. Claus received a wound in the head and instantly fell limp. Santa tried heroically to reach his wife but realized the situation was hopeless and turned, running into the darkness accompanied by Prancer, the only surviving reindeer.

The only witness to the massacre is one surviving elf now living somewhere in Canada under an assumed identity, fearful for his life. It is only from his testimony that we know anything about Santa’s fate.

Realizing the horrific mistake they had made, the pilots dropped white phosphorus bombs with the intention of incinerating all evidence. The entire North Pole lit up and Santa and Prancer could be seen in the distance on a huge block of ice drifting off into the dark sea, the ice everywhere cracked and weakened by the combined effects of white phosphorus and years of global warming.

Within in a few hours, the beating sound of a black helicopter approached Santa and Prancer. The elf, from his hiding place in a snowdrift, could only make out intermittent sounds across the howling coldness, but it seems armed men emerged from the helicopter, shot Prancer and shackled Santa, shoving him into the dark, beating machine. The elf heard a word that sounded like Guantanamo and Santa has not been heard from since. Reports of his fate reached the International Red Cross and organizations like Amnesty International, leading to inquiries, but these have been met only with silence from American authorities.

CHUCKMAN'S MEXICAN SHEPHERDS' PIE

CHUCKMAN’S MEXICAN SHEPHERDS' PIE

2 pounds of Ground Beef

1 Large Sweet Red Pepper – diced

2 Cans Re-fried Beans – Herdez from Mexico is my favorite

A Couple of Handfuls of Frozen Corn

A Couple of Handfuls of Grated Cheddar Cheese

1 Can La Victoria Mexican Enchilada Sauce (Hot variety)

A Couple of Tablespoons of Chipotle Concentrate – available in many supermarkets

1 Package Knorr Au Jus – Prepared according to package


DIRECTIONS

Lightly sauté Beef along with Chipotle concentrate. Place in the bottom of a medium-sized, buttered casserole pan.

Pour half of La Victoria Sauce over, and pour all of prepared Knorr Au Jus over.

Let cool a bit. Spread Corn and Red Pepper over evenly. Salt lightly.

Using a table knife or spatula, spread Refried Beans evenly over top, just as you would mashed potatoes with traditional Sheppards' Pie.

Spread Grated Cheese evenly over top.

Dribble second half of La Victoria Sauce on top.

Bake about half an hour at 350º.

Serve with plain yogurt. Sprinkle with chopped cilantro if you like.

BOOK REVIEW OF CURT GENTRY'S J. EDGAR HOOVER

This biography is a study in quiet, creepy state terror, terror as it took hold in a modern democratic state. No black shirts, no armbands, no drums, just quiet, behind-the-scenes abuse of power, blackmail, fraud, spying without warrants, illegal arrests and deportations.

Naive Americans are sometimes heard to ask how could people in other lands allow evil people to take power? Well, this book will show you how it is done and how it was done in their own country.

As someone else has said, it is a book every American should read. Little that the war criminal, George Bush, has inflicted on the American people wasn’t practiced much earlier under Mr. Hoover.

Gentry’s book reads like a good novel with a strong narrative, and it is loaded with interesting anecdotes.

There have been several interesting biographies of Hoover, but this one is the one I most strongly recommend. This focuses on his career and use of power, and it is there that the truly important story is to be found.

Gentry several times hints around Hoover's homosexuality but doesn't dwell on it. We know from Anthony Summers' book that Hoover had a rather bizarre private life as a flamboyant cross-dresser. This wouldn't be of any great significance except that Hoover had no tolerance for homosexuals in government, having been responsible for destroying the careers of a number of them.

Gentry also makes clear that the insane Joseph McCarthy was largely the creature of Hoover. Hooveer fed him tidbits or sometimes worked backward to supply some printed support after McCarthy had gone off half-cocked bragging about things in public he had not one shred of evidence to support. McCarthy was a drunk looking to spark a lackluster career. He was also thought to be a pedophile, but none of these things mattered to Hoover so long as he could use McCarthy to his purpose. Only when McCarthy stopped being useful did Hoover drop him.

Presidents like Johnson and Kennedy and even Roosevelt eagerly ate the political filth he fed them by hand, casting shame on their legacies. Hoover compromised many people who should have been his strongest critics, including, for example, the head of the American Civil Liberties Union.

For all his years of abuse and excess, it is not clear that he ever achieved anything in the way of making America a safer, more secure place from external and internal enemies.

An important chapter of Hoover’s time in power remains inadequately scrutinized: his full role in the investigation of Kennedy’s assassination. As Gentry documents and as others have documented, the FBI was well aware before the assassination of serious threats against Kennedy and yet seems to have taken inadequate action to thwart them.

Hoover’s role in “solving” the crime remains one of the great mysteries of 20th century American history. The Warren Commission had no independent investigative ability. All it did was take Hoover’s rushed, inadequate, and pre-judged investigation and re-package it. And we know now that the so-called Warren Report was riddled with errors and misjudgment and the selective use of facts. It was a piece of Soviet-era state rubbish posing as detailed investigation.

If, as many who have studied the assassination believe, it was the work of the American Mafia, we have an automatic explanation for Hoover’s shoddy work. Hoover claimed he never believed the Mafia existed until he was almost forced to accept it. He chased pathetic “reds” rather than the real criminals who were eating away at the substance of American society. Many have theorized that the Mafia held evidence, perhaps photographs, of Hoover’s homosexuality and cross-dressing, keeping him neutralized for decades in exactly the way Hoover neutralized so many politicians and potential critics.

I like very much the way Gentry briefly followers through the successors of Hoover at the FBI, summarizing their changes and contributions, and it is not an uplifting story.

The very fact that the FBI building in Washington still has Hoover’s name on it in big metal letters tells us a great deal about the nature of power in America.

CHUCKMAN’S VERSION OF ALEPPO SOUP (LENTIL SOUP FROM SYRIA)

A simple and tasty soup.


1 Cup of Red Lentils

6 Cups of Chicken Stock (or Water may be used for vegetarian version)

1/4 Cup Chick-Pea Flour (aka, Gram Flour - available in any Indian or Mideast grocery store)

1/2 Cup Lemon Juice

3 or 4 Garlic Cloves, crushed

1 Teaspoon Cumin

1/4 Teaspoon Cayenne

1/2 Teaspoon Coriander

Salt to taste


Simmer Lentils in bulk of Stock for about 5 minutes, reserving a small portion of Stock.

Mix Chick Pea Flour in reserved Stock, making a thickening agent. Add to Lentils.

Add Lemon Juice, Cumin, Coriander, Cayenne, and Salt to Lentils.

Saute crushed Garlic briefly until golden. Add to Lentils.

Simmer for about 20 minutes.


This soup is delicious as made above, but it provides a base for many variations. Bits of roasted Lamb and/or fresh Cilantro are nice additions.

BOOK REVIEW OF SIMON WINCHESTER'S THE MAN WHO LOVED CHINA

REVIEW OF SIMON WINCHESTER'S THE MAN WHO LOVED CHINA BY JOHN CHUCKMAN

This is a good read. Simon Winchester provides a tight and fairly vigorous story of the remarkable man, Joseph Needham.

Needham was a brilliant man, gifted in science and languages. He was also a genuine non-conformist, both in his personal life and in political affairs, and he had the fabled abilities of a great scholar to sit for all hours of the day, day after day, analyzing ancient texts and writing world-recognized works about what he discovered.

Needham had the good fortune of being appointed by the British government, as a scientist of world reputation, on a mission to unoccupied China during World War II. His task was to contact as many Chinese academics as possible and help them obtain the resources, provided by the British government, they needed to carry on their work. This was both war-time assistance and an investment in future relations.

As in any effort he undertook, Needham quickly went to work with great vigor. He made a couple of epic journeys across large stretches of China and a number of smaller ones. He contacted many people of note, helping scientists and scholars obtain equipment and supplies to keep their efforts going under the great privations of war.

But, at the same time, he also did something else very important. He collected, wherever he found them and could purchase them, ancient Chinese texts which went back to England with him. Very early the idea struck him of writing a scholarly work on the ancient contributions of China to technology and science.

Needham was such an impressive intellect and so clearly in love with China - he typically wore gowns styled after the gowns worn by Chinese scholars and spoke fluent Mandarin and was bursting with enthusiasm about the things he saw and discovered - that a number of Chinese who only met him briefly were motivated to collect, long after he went home to England, and send him great quantities more of truly precious historical materials.

Needham's great project, a virtual encyclopedia of the history of Chinese science and technology, was never finished by him, but the volumes he did write were immediately embraced by the academic world as important new contributions to knowledge, and the work remains a classic.

Needham discovered - then unknown outside China - that the Chinese had invented a remarkable number of things before they were discovered in Europe. Moveable type - first in the ninth century as wood, later as bronze - was perhaps the most remarkable of these, but there were literally hundreds of others including an early compass and some very early sophisticated mathematics.

Needham's volumes became an important East Asian collection in the libraries of Cambridge University.

An interesting anecdote in the book, unrelated to the subject, concerns Needham's tours to lecture on his discoveries. One was to Chicago, and author Winchester discovered that Theodore Kaczynski, the gifted mathematician who later sank into deep schizophrenia and became the infamous Unabomber living in the wilderness, attended a lecture.

Winchester speculates whether that lecture, including a discussion of gunpowder as it did, might have influenced Kaczynski later. I did think this speculation a bit naïve and a bit of research would have eliminated it. Kaczynski grew up in Chicago, as I did, and as a teenager he made the newspapers with the sophisticated rockets he was building. His rockets were made of metal and used fuel more sophisticated than gunpowder, becoming a subject of interest because they climbed over a mile in altitude, possibly threatening civilian aviation. It seems pretty clear he did not need Needham's lecture on gunpowder.

My only regret about this book is that it was too brief. Needham and his adventures and work are a large subject.

ON THE DEATH OF AN OLD GOOD FRIEND

WRITTEN FOR A NEWSLETTER ADDRESSING THE OLD CHICAGO NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENTS

My old good friend, Preston E. Uney (Bradwell 1959/ South Shore 1963), died on July 7, 2008. He was an aeronautical engineer living with his wife and adopted children in Colorado.

Preston's dad ran a small toy store on Stony Island in the 1960s until the changing neighborhood destroyed his business. The family lived for many years in a small house on Kingston Ave. just south of 79th.

His older sister, Marie, taught us both to dance, however awkward the results. His father, an immigrant from Russia, used to tell electrifying stories of the Russian Front in WWII.

Preston was an interesting independent-minded kid who must have been the only student carrying a Socialist Workers Party sign around South Shore High in the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon presidential campaign. He will be missed.

A LIST OF MEMORABLE FILMS

Here is a list of films I made recently for a younger friend unfamiliar with many classics. I could certainly add to it. Perhaps I will from time to time.


THESE ARE ALL INTERESTING FILMS, MANY ARE GREAT AND MANY ARE CLASSICS. NO EFFORT HAS BEEN MADE TO BE COMPREHENSIVE.

HITCHCOCK

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (1940)
LIFEBOAT (1944)
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
REAR WINDOW (1954)
SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943)
STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951)
SUSPICION (1941)

STANLEY KUBRICK

2001 SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
DR STRANGELOVE (1964)
PATHS OF GLORY (1957)

FRANK CAPRA

ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944)
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)
MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939)

JOHN HUSTON

AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)
MALTESE FALCON (1931)
TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE (1948)

ELIA KAZAN

EAST OF EDEN (1955)
FACE IN THE CROWD (1957)
ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)

ALAIN RESNAIS

HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR (FRENCH – 1959)
LA GUERRE EST FINIE (FRENCH – 1966)
PROVIDENCE (BRITISH-FRENCH – 1976)

HUMPHREY BOGART

AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)
CAINE MUTINY (1954)
CASABLANCA (1942)
MALTESE FALCON (1931)
PETRIFIED FOREST (1936)
TREASURE OF SIERRA MODRE (1948)

CARY GRANT

ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944)
BRINGING UP BABY (1938)
FATHER GOOSE (1964)
HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940)
MONKEY BUSINESS (1952)
MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (1948)
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940)
SUSPICION (1941)

SPENCER TRACY

BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1954)
DESK SET (1957)
THE MOUNTAIN (1956)

KIRK DOUGLAS

CHAMPION (1949)
DETECTIVE STORY (1951)
LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1949)
LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962)
PATHS OF GLORY (1957)

MARLON BRANDO

ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
ONE-EYED JACKS (1961)

ALEC GUINNESS

KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS (BRITISH – 1949)
LADYKILLERS (BRITISH – 1955)
MAN IN THE WHITE SUIT (BRITISH – 1951)
TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY (BRITISH 1979 - MADE FOR TELEVISION)

JAMES MASON

BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978)
FIVE FINGERS (1952)
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
ODD MAN OUT (BRITISH 1947)

LAUREL AND HARDY

THE SHORTS MADE IN 1920S (SILENTS) AND 1930S (SOUND) CONTAIN MANY HILARIOUS SCENES – EXAMPLE: THE PIANO MOVERS. AVOID ALL THEIR FEATURE-LENGTH FILMS.

KATHRINE HEPBURN

ADAM’S RIB (1949)
AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)
BRINGING UP BABY (1938)
DESK SET (1957)
HOLIDAY (1938)
PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940)
SUMMERTIME (1955)

BETTE DAVIS

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)
DARK VICTORY (1939)
JEZEBEL (1938)
LITTLE FOXES (1941)
PETRIFIED FOREST (1936)

OLIVIER DE HAVILLAND

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)
THE HEIRESS (1949)

EVA MARIE SAINT

HATFUL OF RAIN (1957)
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)

INTERESTING ODDITIES

ADVISE AND CONSENT (1962)
AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (GERMAN 1972)
ALPHAVILLE (FRENCH 1965)
AMADEUS (1984)
AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981)
ATLANTIC CITY (FRENCH 1980)
BABETTE'S FEAST (DANISH 1987)
BLOWUP (BRITISH – 1966)
BURNT BY THE SUN (RUSSIAN 1994)
CHAMPAGNE FOR CAESAR (1950)
CINEMA PARADISO (ITALIAN 1988)
CYRANO DE BERGERAC (FRENCH 1990)
DAY FOR NIGHT (FRENCH 1974)
DOCTOR MABUSE (GERMAN 1922)
DR STRANGELOVE (1964)
FACE IN THE CROWD (1957)
FACES (1968)
FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (1967)
HATFUL OF RAIN (1957)
INVESTIGATION OF A CITIZEN ABOVE SUSPICION (ITALIAN 1970)
JUNK MAIL (NORWEIGAN 1997)
KOYAANISQUATSI (1983)
LOCAL HERO (BRITISH 1983)
MARRIAGE OF EVA BRAUN (GERMAN 1979)
MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR (1988)
MOTHER KUSTERS GOES TO HEAVEN (GERMAN 1976)
O LUCKY MAN! (BRITISH 1973)
OF MICE AND MEN (1940)
REPULSION (BRITISH-FRENCH 1965)
ROOM AT THE TOP (BRITISH 1958)
SEDUCTION OF MIMI (ITALIAN 1972)
SEVEN BEAUTIES (ITALIAN 1976)
SHAME (SWEDISH 1968)
SUNDAYS AND CYBELE (FRENCH 1962)
TATIE DANIELLE (FRENCH 1991)
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)
THE CONFORMIST (FRENCH 1970)
THE DARLING (BRITISH 1965)
THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987)
THE RED SHOES (BRITISH 1948)
THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (BRITISH 1993)
THE SERVANT (BRITISH 1963)
THE TENANT (FRENCH 1976)
TIME AFTER TIME (BRITISH 1979)
TOKYO STORY (JAPANESE 1953)
UGETSU (JAPANESE 1953)
WAGES OF FEAR (FRENCH 1952)
WOMAN IN THE DUNE (JAPANESE 1964)

SHAKESPEARE ADAPTATIONS

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1966)
HENRY V (BRITISH 1944)
RICHARD III (BRITISH 1955)
ROMEO AND JULIET (ITALIAN-BRITISH 1968)

JUST FUN FILMS

A HARD DAYS NIGHT (BRITISH 1964 - THE BEATLES)
BREAKING AWAY (1979)
DIVORCE, AMERICAN STYLE (1967)
DUCK SOUP (1933)
FRIENDLY PERSAUSION (1956)
HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (BRITISH 1939)
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)
JOHNNY STECCHINO (ITALIAN 1992)
MA VIE EN ROSE (FRENCH 1997)
MISTER DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936)
MORGAN! (BRITISH 1966)
MY LIFE AS A DOG (SWEDISH 1985)
NINOTCHKA (1939)
NO TIME FOR SARGEANTS (1958)
RED BALLOON (FRENCH 1956 - SHORT)
SINGING IN THE RAIN (1952)
STOLEN KISSES (FRENCH 1968)
THE COMMITMENTS (BRITISH 1991)
THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN (FRENCH 1977)
THE SLINGSHOT (DANISH 1993)
THE THIN MAN (1934)
TRAFIC (FRENCH 1971)
ZAZIE IN THE METRO (FRENCH 1960)
O.HENRY'S FULL HOUSE (1952)
ON THE TOWN (1949)

GREAT CRIME, COPS & GANGSTERS

BREATHLESS (FRENCH 1959)
CAPE FEAR (1961)
DAY OF THE JACKEL (BRITISH 1973)
DIABOLIQUE (FRENCH 1954)
DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
DRESSED TO KILL (1980)
FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)
M (GERMAN – 1931)
MADIGAN (1968)
MARATHON MAN (1976)
PIERROT LE FOU (FRENCH 1965)
POLICE (FRENCH 1985)
RUNAWAY TRAIN (1985)
THE THIRD MAN (BRITISH 1949)
WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956)
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957)
POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE (1984)

GREAT SPY FILMS

IPCRESS FILE (1965)
SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (1966)
TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY (BRITISH 1979 - MADE FOR TELEVISION)

GREAT WESTERNS

HIGH NOON (1952)
ONE-EYED JACKS (1961)
SHANE (1953)

GREAT WAR FILMS

ATTACK! (1956)
BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957)
DAS BOOT (GERMAN 1982)
GRAND ILLUSION (FRENCH 1937)
KING AND COUNTRY (BRITISH 1964)
PATHS OF GLORY (1957)
PLATOON (1986)
WAR AND PEACE (RUSSIAN 1968)
ZULU (BRITISH 1964)
STEEL HELMET (1951)
THE BRIDGE (GERMAN 1960)

INTERESTING SCIENCE FICTION/ MILD HORROR

2001 SPACE ODYSSEY (1968)
ALIEN (1979 – NONE OF THE AWFUL SEQUELS)
AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (1981)
BLADE RUNNER (1982)
COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970)
FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS (BRITISH 1967)
FRANKENSTEIN (1931)
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)
KING KONG (1933)
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)
NOSFERATU (GERMAN 1922)
QUEEN OF BLOOD (ITALIAN 1966)
ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968)
THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)
THE THING (1951)

GREAT ROMANCE FILMS

AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951)
ROMEO AND JULIET (ITALIAN-BRITISH 1968)
SABRINA (1954)
THE QUIET MAN (1952)
UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (FRENCH 1964)

OTHERS, UNCLASSIFIED

AMADEUS (1984)
HOOP DREAMS (1994)
INNER CIRCLE (RUSSIA 1991)
JEAN DE FLORETTE/ MANON DES SOURCES (FRENCH 1987 – TWO FILMS)
KEYS TO THE KINGDOM (1944)
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)
PELLE THE CONQUOER (DANISH 1988)
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962)
TUNES OF GLORY (BRITISH 1960)
TWELVE ANGRY MEN (1957)
UMBERTO D (ITALIAN 1952)
VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE (1962)

BOOK REVIEW: RICHARD DAWKINS' THE GOD DELUSION

There has been a great deal of noise over this book. To my mind, it mostly amounts to the proverbial tempest in a teapot.

First, despite the right of religious liberty people in advanced countries supposedly enjoy, we are regularly immersed, willy-nilly, in religious muck. The last couple of decades in America, the nightly news has featured everything from endless demands for prayer in public institutions and the creation myth being taught in schools to attacks on doctors doing legal abortions and silly fights over displaying the ten commandments in public courts. What’s so terrible about the other side getting a little publicity for a change?

Richard Dawkins is a pleasant and clear writer. The first part of his book is genuinely funny, hilarious in places, as he pokes fun at the absurd stories and rules of the Bible. At his best, he reminds me of Mark Twain in Letters from the Earth.

I think he is much less successful in the middle part of the book in trying to establish a logical framework for thinking about religion. Religion simply is not logical, none of it, ever, and just as the scholastic fathers tried over and over to “prove” the existence of God – Dawkins entertainingly goes through some of this – this effort seems futile.

There is an aspect of religion that I believe Dawkins misses. It is the cultural dimension of much of religion. We know many Jews, as in Israel for example, are quite worldly and not believers, yet something binds them to the heritage of their religion. That something is what Dawkins misses.

Religion works very much like prejudice: there are simply attitudes and perspectives that groups of people share together as a cultural inheritance, and the attitudes are generally detrimental to, and disparaging of, others.

I share the belief that religion has been responsible for many of humanity’s miseries. The record of Christianity has likely been the bloodiest of any religion, despite all the blubbering today about Islam. Christianity has been at the root of crusades, inquisitions, religious wars, mass murders, civil wars, torture, destruction of aboriginal people, slavery, and countless other horrors and abuses.

But I do not believe for an instant that religion and its abuses will stop any time soon, and I certainly do not believe that any words I can say will change the views of the religiously-minded. But Dawkins does appear to believe this, which I think is a little naïve for a man of such exceptional talent.

I believe it quite likely that we inherit our tendency for religion, just as we likely do for our politics. If that is true, we will only see the superstition and prejudice of religion disappear as humans evolve.

Most people who do not take their religion too seriously will enjoy at least a good portion of this provocative book, but the seriously religious would best avoid it.

BOOK REVIEW: THOMAS DILORENZO'S THE REAL LINCOLN

Let me say, right off, that this is not a biography of Lincoln. It is not even a character study because most of Lincoln’s character is never touched here. This is a study – I think it fair to call it an attack - of one aspect of Lincoln, his ideological purpose in fighting the Civil War. However, it is a determined, fact-filled attack, worth reading.

I have always believed, on the basis of my own studies, that the American Civil War was unnecessary, but this is a view that arouses hostile feelings in Americans as it runs against the public-school civics course beliefs around that conflict.

There is definitely an American Civic Religion with a set of tenets and sacred writings and a cast of mythically-endowed characters comparable to the chief figures of the Old and New Testaments. Many well-known American historians, some quite eminent, are conscious or unconscious proponents of the Civic Religion, not such a difficult thing as you might first imagine because history, just like good police detective work, involves interpretation, judgment, and instincts. The raw facts, when they are even known, are always susceptible of emphasis and interpretation.

So it was refreshing to find a serious writer who also believes that the war was unnecessary.

However, Dilorenzo’s reason for saying the war was unnecessary is different to my own. The author believes that Lincoln consciously used the war to impose the so-called American System of the Whig Party and Henry Clay, destroying the powers of the individual states and centralizing government in the United States. I believe rather that this was one of the unavoidable effects, wars always and everywhere being far more revolutionary events than people generally recognize.

There can be no doubt that Dilorrenzo marshals a strong case, but I believe that he largely fails to prove his main thesis. Lincoln, although not the sentimental figure of American text books and the Lincoln Memorial, was not America’s Joseph Stalin.

Most of his fact-marshalling is impressive, but when he goes off on a tangent to give a background on the basic political split between Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians, he actually gets it rather wrong. Jefferson was anything but the kind of figure he is in the eyes of libertarian devotees like Dilorenzo. He was hungry for power, hungry for empire, and ruthless to those who opposed him. He bent or broke laws many times and never was bothered about rights of others where they stood in the way of his vision. Jefferson was, in short, everything the author claims Lincoln was.

The tone of this book becomes almost oppressive as the author hammers away with citations and anecdotes tending to support his view – in other words, the author is guilty of overkill.

The sense of oppressiveness is increased by the fact the author writes from an ideological viewpoint, not many pages convincing the reader of the author’s pronounced libertarian attitude. In general, I do not like histories or biographies written with an ideological perspective, but here the fault is compounded by the author’s narrow focus.

I don’t think anyone with a fairly open mind can study Lincoln and come away with a view like Dilorenzo’s. Lincoln himself was a victim of believing in the American Civic Religion of his day. He genuinely believed in The Union as a semi-mystical concept. Lincoln was a genuine skeptic with regard to conventional religion and the existence of God, and the feelings that might have had an outlet there attached themselves to “The Union.” He was tough and hard-headed in many respects, but he would have been, in this writer’s judgment, temperamentally incapable of launching and continuing a vast war for the purpose of installing Whig policy.

For those interested, the reviewer believes the Civil War was unnecessary because most great wars are unnecessary and rarely solve anything. For example, World War I only created the foundation for World War II. The American Civil War, which was not fought over slavery, solved little about the ugly institution of slavery. The South went on for about a century afterward with a new set of arrangements for its black citizens hardly better than the previous institution.

The Civil War did establish the anti-democratic principle that no state can separate from the United States, hardly an admirable or advanced attitude. The Civil War is also the tipping point in America becoming a world power with fervent imperialistic views (demonstrated earlier in a more provincial theater of operation in many policies such as the Mexican War), again hardly an admirable outcome.

I believe too that the angry, long-unforgiving South actually dragged the United States backward in social progress over the next century. The United States might have become a better, more decent place without the South and its superstitious religion and traditions of personal honor, much resembling the blood-feud attitudes of backward places like Armenia. And slavery itself would have naturally died out even in the South in a few decades as it did in so many places like Brazil.

CHUCKMAN'S VERSION OF GENERAL TSO'S CHICKEN

I love Chinese food. This recipe is my version of a classic.


CHUCKMAN’S VERSION OF GENERAL TSO’S CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS

Chicken – Use either traditional cut-up Chicken Breast (about a pound – cut into bite-size pieces) or Drumettes or Drumsticks – drumettes or legs are unconventional but delicious – you need a greater weight to compensate for bones.

Broccoli – One medium head

Canola or Peanut Oil for frying

Dried crushed Chilli Peppers

Garlic – 1 medium-to-large clove, finely chopped

Ginger – a good-sized chunk (about the size of an average thumb), finely chopped – fresh is valuable for this recipe for its aromatic quality, but in a pinch, use bottled

Chicken Broth – 3 Tablespoons

Rice Vinegar – 2 Tablespoons

Hoisin Sauce – 2 Tablespoons (available in any Asian market and many supermarkets)

Sesame Oil – 1 Teaspoon

Sugar or Sugar Substitute – 2 Teaspoons Sugar or equivalent Substitute - the Substitute works nicely in this recipe

Dark Soy Sauce – this is the thicker type that has molasses in it

Cornstarch – a few Tablespoons

Dry Sherry – a good splash


METHOD

Spread Chicken pieces on a plate or platter and sprinkle lightly with cornstarch, a generous splash of Sherry, and a smaller splash of Soy Sauce. Toss lightly together and let stand briefly.

Blanch broccoli in a Covered Saucepan with a small amount of water on bottom. Bring water to a rapid boil, continue a minute or two, remove from the heat, and cool with cold running water. Broccoli will be bright green and par-cooked. Chop into florets and thin stalk slices. Set aside.

The sauce consists of 2 Tablespoons of Rice Wine Vinegar, 2 teaspoons of sugar or equivalent of sugar-substitute, 2 Tablespoons of Hoisin Sauce, 1 Tablespoon Dark Soy Sauce, a large clove of Garlic finely chopped, a chunk of fresh Ginger finely chopped, 1 Teaspoon of Sesame Oil, 3 Tablespoons of Chicken Broth, and a generous sprinkle of crushed Chili Peppers. Set aside.

Mix about 1 Teaspoon more of Cornstarch and a splash of cold water. This will thicken sauce when cooking. Set aside.

GENERAL NOTE ON STIR-FRYING

This ingenious, fuel-saving method of cooking is done in a hierarchy of cooking times, the ingredient requiring the most time being first – when all ingredients are together, they are cooked with the sauce briefly.

In this case, start with the Chicken. Saute the Chicken pieces lightly (do not overcook or flesh looses its succulence).

If you are using drumettes or legs, you will need a more substantial cooking time, especially legs – they should become golden and no blood should run.

Add blanched Broccoli and stir briefly.

Add Sauce ingredients. Add thickener.

Let simmer together a few minutes.

OPTIONS

Make the flavour very hot with plenty of chili peppers or use a Teaspoon of genuine Chinese Hot Chili Oil (this is very hot stuff, available in any Asian market). Or add Whole Dried Chilis (a dozen or so) to stir-fry after Chicken – this is a traditional ingredient.

Sprinkle servings with finely-sliced green onions and/or crushed peanuts.

CHUCKMAN'S QUICK, THIN CHEESE/ BACON/ SPINACH PIZZAS

An absolutely delicious snack or light meal or appetiser

CHUCKMAN’S QUICK, THIN CHEESE/BACON/SPINACH PIZZAS


INGREDIENTS:

Commercial Tortillas or Flat Breads – the very thin kind – whole wheat or white – 7 small ones for the amounts in this recipe

Oil – to lightly coat tortillas

Red Sauce – leftover or a good bottled – you need just enough to coat each tortilla

Cheese – grated – I suggest a mixture of mozzarella, parmesan, and provolone, but use your favourite - have enough to cover each tortilla generously

Spinach – I small box of frozen – thawed and excess water lightly squeezed out

Bacon – thick-sliced kind – cut – through the width - five or six strips, each about half an inch wide – this will yield enough small chunky pieces for 5 or 6 to a tortilla

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 400.

Saute Bacon chunks ahead, drain and let cool – do not over-crisp because it will cook additional time in the oven.

Use a cookie sheet for Tortillas, either lightly oiled or, as I prefer, covered with parchment paper (no clean-up with this wonderful stuff).

Lightly oil both surfaces of each Tortilla. Spread a very thin layer of the sauce on one side.

Sprinkle each Tortilla with Spinach.

Sprinkle each Tortilla with 5 or 6 chunks of Bacon, spread fairly evenly.

Sprinkle generously with Grated Cheese so it is almost spilling over.

Bake until all the cheese has melted and turned lightly golden – this should be on the order of 10 minutes, but go by appearance

Serve either whole as light meals or sliced (scissors work best) into wedges as an appetiser.

FURTHER SUGGESTION: Top cheese with thinly sliced brown mushrooms before baking.

CHUCKMAN TRANSLATION: A PAKISTANI LANGUAGE

Segalanya Dengan Nama Jesus
Posted on Thursday, May 15 @ 01:03:09 EDT by admin

Assalamualaikum sdr.

Dalam keghairan kita mengharungi dunia hidup yang penuh dengan keindahan ciptaan Allah SWT kita perlu sentiasa berwaspada dengan persekitaraan kita yang penuh dengan ranjau dan onak. Dalam banyak hal orang Islam sentiasa Take for granted terhadap apa yang berlaku di sekeliling kita sehingga dah terantuk baru terngadah.

Oleh itu Paksu akan cuba mengupas beberapa isu yang sentiasa dekat dengan kita sebagai Muslim yang beramal (practicing Muslim) agar Paksu sendiri dan anak buah Paksu dapat sama-sama menghayati Islam sepenuhnya.

Kali ini Paksu tertarik untuk mengulas satu penomena yang serius yang menghentam Islam tetapi kita samada sedari atau tidak tak ambil pusing. Macam juga isu COCACOLA yang banyak dibincang di situs ini sebenarnya kita dilanyak dari kiri-kanan atas bawah luar dalam namun kita masih leka. Nama ancaman ini yang Paksu sebut sebagai Dengan Nama Jesus. Dengan Nama Jesuslah maka bumi kita dijajah, malah seluruh dunia. Orang Kristian akan membuat segala sesuatu untuk mematikan Islam. Kini mereka seolah-olah mempunyai justifikasi melalui peperangan melawan keganasan yang = Islam.

Sedarlah segala-galanya adalah Dengan Nama Jesus. Sebuah tabloid melaporkan melalui tulisan oleh John Chuckman bahawa Presiden AS mempunyai penasihat agamanya bernama Franklin Graham anak Billy Graham yang memainkan peranan yang sama kepada Nixon. Franklin Graham adalah di antara mubaligh Kristian gaya motivator yang menjadi kegilaan (craze) masyarakat AS. Orang seperti ini selalu berceramah di TV (yang sedihnya perkara seperti ini pun sudah menjadi perkara biasa di TV Indon….dan awas apa yang menghalang daripada ianya berlaku di negara Islam Malaysia…kan Injil terjemahan yang menggunakan Allah sebagai Tuhan Kristian pun sudah dihalalkan oleh negara Islam Malaysia) dan seminar besar-besaran (Macam forum Perdana). Billy Graham Organization adalah sebuah organisasi yang besar dan kaya yang berjaya “menyelamatkan” orang Kristian dan konvert. Apa yang menjadi isunya ialah Graham melalui organisasinya, Samaritan`s Purse mengajak pengikutnya kepada satu fahaman Kristian yang sempit yang orang Kristian arus perdana sendiri merasa jijik. Dinominasi(mazhab) Kristian yang dibawanya adalah The Southern Baptists yang terkenal dengan kepercayaan ekstrim yang pada awalnya menyingkir kaum Negro daripada gereja kemudian menetang usaha kemanusiaan yang dibawa oleh Dr King. Kini Franklin (yang gemar bermain dan mengumpul senjata otomatik) yang menjadi kawan rapat Rumah Putih dengan organisasi-organisasi licik mereka sedang memasuki Iraq dalam usaha untuk mempengaruhi orang Iraq melalui bantuan dan dakwah/dakyah mereka. Sebelum perang Iraq Franklin Graham telah memberi ceramah(surmons) hari good Friday di Pentagon (Kementerian Pertahanan AS). Di antara kata-katanya; “Kita bukan menyerang Islam tetapi Islam telah menyerang kita. Tuhan Islam bukanlah Tuhan yang sama. Dia bukan anak Tuhan kepercayaan Kristian dan Judeo-Kristian. Ia adalah Tuhan yang berbeza, dan saya yakin ia adalah ugama yang cukup jahat dan keji”

The Southern Baptists akan juga turut memberi bantuan kepada Iraq. Dan bayangkan apa yang mereka akan buat kerana bekas presiden Southern Baptists Mission Board, Jerry Vines pernah berkata bahawa Nabi Muhammad SAW adalah “seorang perogol kanak-kanak yang dirasuk syaitan”…astagfirullah ! ! (Teringat apa kata Farish Noor, seorang Melayu Islam terhadap Rasullallah… lebih teruk lagi daripada itu yang ditulis dalam surat kabar milik kerajaan tak lama dahulu dan dia masih bebas malah menjadi perantara forum di TV kerajaan). Jadi jangan hairan apabila Bush kata `kita akan perang salib(crusade)` apabila menara WTCnya runtuh. Ini selaras dengan pandangan sempit Kristian yang dianutinya iaitu Islam mesti diperangi dengan apa cara sekali pun.

Penulis John Chuckman merumuskan bahawa adalah jelas dan nyata tindakan Pentagon memerangi pengganas adalah pembunuhan professional diatas nama Jesus untuk negara.
Jadi Paksu berseru kepada semua termasuk pemegang kuasa memerintah dan diri Paksu sendiri supaya mengatur langkah dengan berhati-hati jangan tersangkut reba lalu rebah dan terpijak jerangkap samar lalu musnah.

WallAllahu`alam
PAKSU
Alorsetar 150503

CHUCKMAN TRANSLATION: IN GREEK

Το πράγμα χωρίς τον εγκέφαλο

Από John Chuckman < chuckman@YellowTimes.org >
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/thingwithnobrain06may04.shtml
6 Μαϊ'ου, 2004

(YellowTimes.org) -- είχα μια δυσάρεστη στιγμή στο θάμνο ημέρας που αποφασίστηκε για να εξετάσει "τον αραβικό κόσμο." Είναι άτομο που μπορώ να σταθώ, έτσι όταν έρχεται η φωνή του στο ραδιόφωνο, το μεταστρέφω πάντα μακριά. Καλά, αυτή τη φορά επίσης μακριά μακριά και απαραιτήτως ακούστηκα μερικές προτάσεις, αυτές αρχίζοντας από "τους ανθρώπους στο Ιράκ πρέπει να καταλάβουν και πρέπει να καταλάβουν .."

Πρέπει; Η άλαλη υπεροψία των λέξεών του ζάλιζε. Πάνω από το κακώς-επιλεγμένο λεξιλόγιό του, το άτομο δεν ζήτησε συγγνώμη ποτέ όπως έμαθα αργότερα από το Διαδίκτυο. Εδώ ήταν ένας διοικητής που μιλά για την inexcusable βιαιότητα ενάντια στους ανίσχυρους φυλακισμένους που λένεων στα εκατομμύρια των ν ανθρώπων που πρέπει να καταλάβουν. Εδώ ήταν ένα παθητικά-ανεπαρκές άτομο που προσπεράστηκε έτσι από τα γεγονότα ότι αισθάνθηκε την ανάγκη να εξετάσει "τον αραβικό κόσμο," και τους έλεγε τι πρέπει να καταλάβουν.

Φυσικά, η απέραντη, ανεγκέφαλος υπεροψία του διαβιβάστηκε σε άλλους τρόπους. Εξέτασε το "αραβικό κόσμο" χωρίς τη χρησιμοποίηση των δικτύων ότι πολλοί ακούνε. Θέλησε μια ασφαλή έξοδο - χρηματοκιβώτιο, δηλαδή για τον και τη γνωστή ανικανότητά του να χειριστεί οποιαδήποτε ερώτηση πιό σύνθετη από "πώς Mom;" Απέφυγε σκόπιμα το Al Jazeerah, ένα δίκτυο που ρωτά τις σκληρές ερωτήσεις και στους του οποίου υπαλλήλους οι στρατιώτες του έχουν στοχεύσει σκόπιμα και έχουν σκοτώσει.

Αναρωτιέμαι πόσων ο νέος τρομοκρατών θάμνος έχει δημιουργήσει σε όλη τη Μέση Ανατολή; Φανταστείτε την οργή των νέων αραβικών ατόμων που βλέπουν τις εικόνες άλλων νέων αραβικών ατόμων με τα ύψη πίεσης τους στις τσάντες που χρησιμοποιούνται όπως το απόρριμμα μιας χυδαίας υπόγειας πορνογραφικής ταινίας; Μερικές από τις πιό φοβερές σκηνές δεν έχουν αναμφισβήτητα καμία φωτογραφία επειδή οι δράστες σχεδόν βεβαίως δολοφονήθηκαν. Ακόμα και οι χαμογελώντας κρετίνοι από τον bayous και backwoods της Αμερικής που φαίνεται στις δημοσιευμένες εικόνες ξέρουν καλύτερα από για να φωτογραφιστούν δεσμεύοντας τη δολοφονία.

Ως επί το πλείστον, οι ένοπλες δυνάμεις των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών δεν μισθώνουν το είδος καθαρός-αποκοπής, Sir-rj'hnontas τα πρόσωπα αμετάβλητα χρησιμοποιώ ως εκπρόσωποι δημόσιος-σχέσεών τους. Χρειάζονται τους ανθρώπους που θα εκπαιδευθούν για να σκοτώσουν και να υπακούσουν τις κατατάξεις, και οι περισσότερες από τη δολοφονία πρόκειται να γίνουν στις φτωχές, απόμακρες θέσεις όπου οι φωνές των θυμάτων δεν ακούγονται ποτέ στην Αμερική.

Στρατιωτικοί recruiters γεμίζουν ένα καλό μέρος των ποσοστώσεών τους από τα πολλές μελαγχολικές τέλματα και τις τρώγλες της δημοκρατίας. Τους γεμίζουν με το είδος ανθρώπων που ειδάλλως να μην απασχοληθούν σε όλοι. Παίρνουν αναμφισβήτητα ένα δυσανάλογο μερίδιο των ανθρώπων που απολαμβάνουν και τον πόνο, το είδος ανθρώπων που βρίσκεται σε κάθε κοινωνία στη γη.

Δεν παίρνει μια μεγάλη προσπάθεια της φαντασίας να προσδοκηθεί τι θα συμβεί πότε δίνετε σε τέτοιους ανθρώπους μερικές εβδομάδες εκπαιδευτικός στα φονικά και λάμποντας παπούτσια και τις στέλνετε μακριά σε ένα απομακρυσμένο έδαφος όπως το Ιράκ, μια θέση τους της οποίας ανθρώπους μπορούν να καταλάβουν, και για τις οποίες ξέρουν μόνο τον ανενημέρωτο, προκαλώντας τα συνθήματα του Προέδρου τους.
Όταν ένα αξιοκαταφρόνητο ήθος poy όπως το θάμνο κάθεται άνετα στην καρέκλα δέρματός του και υπογράφει μια κατάταξη να εισβληθεί ένα απόμακρο έδαφος, είναι ακριβώς οι φρίκες της φυλακής Abu Ghraib αυτός απαραιτήτως εκδόσεις.

Θυμηθείτε τον υπολοχαγό Calley και τα αγόρια του που δολοφονούν ένα ολόκληρο χωριό στο Βιετνάμ; Εκείνο το καλό παλαιό αγόρι δεν δοκίμασε ποτέ τη σημαντική δικαιοσύνη μιας στιγμής. Υπήρξε πραγματικά μια βιαστική επιχείρηση για μια στιγμή στα αναμνηστικά Calley υπολοχαγών, ειδικά στο νότο.

Υπήρξαν διάφορες τέτοιες σφαγές που ανακαλύφθηκαν στο Βιετνάμ, και ένα μπορεί να αμφιβάλει ότι άλλες πήγαν άγνωστες. Ακόμα ήταν η σχισμή περίπου είκοσι-χιλίων λαιμών, συνήθως του χωριού ανώτεροι υπάλληλοι, από τα γενναία άτομα των ειδικών δυνάμεων. Αλλά ακόμη και τους ναζιστικός-όπως τη σφαγή δεν θα μπορούσε να συγκρίνει με την εργασία των ατόμων που πετούν τα αεριωθούμενα αεροπλάνα, αποκαλούμενοι πολεμικοί ήρωες ατόμων ακόμα στην Αμερική, άτομα που βομβάρδισαν συστηματικά και τις αμέτρητες πόλεις, χωριά, και αγροκτήματα, παράγοντας αρκετά θύματα για να θάψουν την πόλη της Ουάσιγκτον κάτω από ένα βουνό της μμένων σάρκας και του αδραχτιού, σχεδόν όλα τους πολίτες.

Κατά τη διάρκεια εκείνου του πολέμου, το ι μίλησε μιά φορά σε έναν αμερικανικό παλαίμαχο του παγκόσμιου πολέμου ΙΙ για τη φρίκη αυτό που πήγαινε επάνω. Μου είπε μια ιστορία. Ήταν σε ένα τραίνο με δύο άλλους Αμερικανούς και έναν γερμανικό αιχμάλωτο πολέμου. Ένας από τους Αμερικανούς έβαλε ξαφνικά το αυτόματο πιστόλι του στο ύψος πίεσης του Γερμανού και φύσηξε τους εγκεφάλους του έξω. Δεν είχε κανέναν λόγο και γέλασε ακριβώς μετά από να κάνει το.

Όπως έχω γράψει πριν, δεν μπορώ ποτέ να ξεχάσω κάποιο που ήξερα στο γυμνάσιο λέγοντας με για το πώς αυτός και οι φίλοι του θα συσσώρευαν σε ένα αυτοκίνητο και θα οδηγούσαν κάτω στο γκέτο μερικές νύχτες, δοκιμάζοντας τα "μειωμένα niggers" για την εύθυμη ψυχαγωγία της θέας τους που έτρεξαν για τις ζωές τους. Έχω συνδέσει πάντα εκείνη την επίπονη μνήμη με τα άτομα που βίασαν αργότερα και δολοφόνησαν τον τρόπο τους σε ολόκληρο το Βιετνάμ.

Δεν είναι ότι Αμερικανοί είναι χειρότεροι από άλλους ανθρώπους, είναι ότι είναι οι ίδιοι. Ακόμα ενθαρρύνονται συνεχώς για να σκεφτούν ότι είναι καλύτεροι - πιό προηγμένος, εκπαιδευμένος, περισσότερο αφιερωμένος στις δημοκρατικές και ανθρώπινες τιμές. Στις λέξεις του Προέδρου, "η Αμερική ξέρω τις προσοχές για κάθε ndividual." Καλά, εκτός από το γεγονός ότι εκείνες οι περιγραφές εγκαθιστούν στην καλύτερη περίπτωση μια μειονότητα Αμερικανών, που σκέφτονται ότι είστε καλύτεροι από οι λιγότερο τυχεροί άνθρωποι είναι μια εγγυημένη μέθοδος για την αδικία και τη φρίκη.
Σημειώνω ότι σε αυτήν την ημέρα ακόμη και οι περισσότερες φοβερές εικόνες των ιρακινών παιδιών που παραμορφώνονται και που σκοτώνονται με τον αμερικανικό βομβαρδισμό δεν δημοσιεύονται από το βασικό Τύπο του νομού. Πολλοί Αμερικανοί είναι συναισθηματικοί, και οι εικόνες των καταπληκτικών και παραμορφωμένων παιδιών να παραγάγουν τα αποτελέσματα που δεν επιδιώχτηκαν από εκείνους που τρέχουν τη χώρα, αλλά οι εικόνες φυλακών μπορούν να χαρακτηριστούν ως εξαίρεση, ως βλάβη μερικών κακών ανθρώπων που σπάζουν τους κανόνες.

Καλά, ποια κοινωνία δεν έχει τέτοιους κανόνες; Εκεί τίποτα ειδικό για την Αμερική επίσημα να αντιτάξει τα βασανιστήρια, την ταπείνωση, και τη δολοφονία. Ακόμα και οι δικτατορίες θέτουν δημόσια τέτοιους κανόνες, αλλά ποια κοινωνία όχι να παραβιάσουν τους κανόνες μόλις βυθίζει στη σαπρή επιχείρηση του πολέμου;
Ένας γαλλικός τηλεοπτικός σταθμός έχει λάβει μια τρεις-και-α-μισή μαγνητοταινία λεπτού από ένα αμερικανικό ελικόπτερο που λαμβάνεται τον περασμένο Δεκέμβριο. Υπάρχουν ένα πειραματικό και στρατιωτικό γκάγκστερ εν πλω, και συζητήσεις ανώτερων υπαλλήλων διαταγής τους σε τους σε ένα ραδιόφωνο. Ο αμερικανικός στρατιώτης πυροβολεί τρεις άοπλους Ιρακινούς, ένας-ένας, δεδομένου ότι ο διοικητής αποφλοιώνει τις κατευθύνσεις του σε τον. Το τρίτο άτομο προσπαθεί να κρύψει, και προσπαθεί έπειτα να σέρθεί μακριά, σαφώς πληγωμένος. Ο ανώτερος υπάλληλος τον διατάζει που σκοτώνεται, και είναι γρήγορα.

Θυμηθείτε τις συνομιλίες ραδιοφωνικής μετάδοσης των αμερικανικών πιλότων κατά τη διάρκεια της πρώτης σύγκρουσης κόλπων δεδομένου ότι και βομβάρδισαν τα μίλια των ιρακινών στρατιωτών που πιάστηκαν σε μια μαρμελάδα κυκλοφορίας ενώ υποχωρώντας από την πόλη του Κουβέιτ; Ακούσαμε τις λέξεις, σαφώς προφορικές με την ίδια αίσθηση της διασκέδασης που άκουσα δεδομένου ότι ένα νέο άτομο στο Σικάγο, "αυτό είναι όπως το shootin" ψάρια σε μια κάννη!" ραδιοφωνική μετάδοση στην τηλεόραση χωρίς οποιαδήποτε σχόλιο ή κριτική από τους εκφωνητές ή τους πολιτικούς.

Σε αυτήν την ημέρα, δεν υπάρχει καμία εξέταση στην εξαφάνιση περίπου τρεις χιλιάες φυλακισμένων στο Αφγανιστάν. Μια ευρωπαϊκή αποδεικτική ταινία προτείνει έντονα την αμερικανική συνενοχή στη μαζική δολοφονία τους έξω στο επιδόρπιο από μερικούς από τους πιό τραγελαφικούς πολεμάρχους με τους οποίους οι ΗΠΑ συνδέθηκαν. Οι φυλακισμένοι σύμφωνα με τις υπάρχουσες πληροφορίες οδηγήθηκαν, εργάζονται μετά από τη batch, που γεμίστηκε στα φορτηγά, μέσω μιας ήλιος-ψημένης αγριότητας, που ασφυκτιά στην θερμότητα ενώ αμερικανικά στρατεύματα που πρόσεξαν αδρανώς.
Μην ξεχάστε τις λέξεις του Donald Rumsfeld σχετικά με τους φυλακισμένους στο Αφγανιστάν. Είπε δημόσια ότι όλοι οι ξένοι μαχητές που συλλαμβάνονται πρέπει να σκοτωθούν ή να περιτοιχιστούν μόνιμα μακριά. Σκέφτεστε ότι το είδος ηγεσίας να επηρεάσει τις τοποθετήσεις σέρνεται οι διάδρομοι των στρατιωτικών φυλακών με τους ανθρώπους στο έλεός τους;
Οι πόλεμοι είναι μια εντελώς ακάθαρτη επιχείρηση, και, εκτός αν είστε διαφθαρμένοι, δεν τους αρχίζετε. Ο θάμνος είναι αρμόδιος για αυτό που έχει συμβεί στο Ιράκ και το Αφγανιστάν τόσο σίγουρα όσο και οι γερμανικοί ηγέτες ήταν αρμόδιοι για τις πράξεις των στρατιωτών τους κατά τη διάρκεια του παγκόσμιου πολέμου ΙΙ.

Θ*Ιοχν Chuckman

[ Θ*Ιοχν Chuckman είναι προηγούμενος κύριος οικονομολόγος για μια μεγάλη καναδική επιχείρηση πετρελαίου. Έχει πολλά ενδιαφέροντα και είναι ισόβιος σπουδαστής της ιστορίας. Γράφει με μια εμπαθή επιθυμία για την τιμιότητα, τον κανόνα του λόγου, και την ανησυχία για την ανθρώπινη ευπρέπεια. Είναι μέλος κανενός πολιτικού συμβαλλόμενου μέρους και παίρνει την εξαίρεση σε αυτό που έχει κληθεί πολιτισμό της Αμερικής το "της καταγγελίασ" με τη συνήθειά του μείωσης κάθε σημαντικού ζητήματος σε ένα μη παραγωγικό όρισμα μεταξύ δύο simplistically καθορισμένων ομάδων. Θ*Ιοχν άφησε τις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες ως φτωχό νέο άτομο από τη νότια πλευρά του Σικάγου όταν επιβιβάστηκε η κυβέρνηση στη δολοφονία των εκατομμυρίων Βιετναμέζος στο έδαφός τους επειδή συνέβησαν να αγκαλιάσουν τις λανθασμένες οικονομικές πίστεις. Ζει στον Καναδά, ο οποίος είναι τρυφερός της κλήσης "του peaceable βασίλειου." ]

Θ*Ιοχν Chuckman ενθαρρύνει τα σχόλιά σας: chuckman@YellowTimes.org

Το YellowTimes.org είναι διεθνείς ειδήσεις και δημοσίευση άποψης. Το YellowTimes.org ενθαρρύνει το υλικό του για να αναπαραχθεί, ανατυπωμένος, ή η ραδιοφωνική μετάδοση υπό τον όρο ότι οποιαδήποτε τέτοιαδήποτε αναπαραγωγή προσδιορίζει την αρχική πηγή, συνδέσεις Ιστού http://www.YellowTimes.org. Διαδίκτυο σε http://www.YellowTimes.org εκτιμάται.

Θα συμπαθούσατε να λάβετε τα επίλεκτα άρθρα YellowTimes.org μέσω του ηλεκτρονικού ταχυδρομείου;
Σε αυτή την περίπτωση, θα λάβετε μια Δευτέρα, την Τετάρτη και την Παρασκευή ηλεκτρονικού ταχυδρομείου από YellowTimes.org. Αυτό το ηλεκτρονικό ταχυδρομείο περιέχει το ένα άρθρο χαρακτηριστικών γνωρισμάτων που περιλαμβάνεται στο σώμα του ηλεκτρονικού ταχυδρομείου. Θα σας παρασχεθούν έπειτα οι περιγραφές και οι συνδέσεις άλλων άρθρων που δημοσιεύονται σε YellowTimes.org από την τελευταία αναπροσαρμογή ειδήσεων.

Σημάδι επάνω κατωτέρω!

CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: PIZZA - CRUST AND SEVERAL SPECIAL TOPPING COMBINATIONS

I have been a serious cook for decades, this being one of the reasons I was able to serve as restaurant reviewer for a metropolitan newspaper. When I say "a serious cook," I mean someone who goes beyond using the recipes of others and creates his or her own. From time to time I will post some of mine.


CHUCKMAN’S PIZZA MEDITERRANEAN

If you follow the directions, you will enjoy one of the best pizzas you've ever eaten.


Whole wheat or white crust – recipe below
Thin layer tomato sauce – recipe reference below
Oil-soaked sun-dried tomatoes, thinly sliced
Crumbled (pre-cooked) Italian sweet sausage
Thinly-sliced canned artichokes
Thinly-sliced onion, salted and soaked ahead
Thin-sliced red pepper, salted and soaked ahead
Fresh mushrooms, thinly-sliced
Kalamata olives
Mozzarella cheese - grated
Fontina cheese - grated
Olive oil


PIZZA CRUST – USE ALSO FOR A NICE FOCCACIO

Whole Wheat Flour and All Purpose Unbleached Flour mixed dry – up to 60% Whole Wheat - 3 Cups Total (Note: pour about 3 ½ cups – saving a bit for dusting later – also amount of Flour absorbed by water varies with climate and weather).

Note: If you do not want Whole Wheat crust, use only All Purpose White.

Lukewarm Water - 1 Cup
Regular dry yeast – 1 Teaspoon
Salt – about 1 Teaspoon
Oil – to use as required
Sugar – pinch or two (not required but helps yeast rise faster)

________________________________
NOTE: NEW APPROACH ON PIZZA CRUST

I've learned and tested an interesting new approach to this crust. It yields a crust that is nicely honeycombed with air pockets, resembling an artisan bread. Simply use more water, about 1 1/2 to 1 2/3 Cups, leaving everything else the same. You will get a very wet dough which you can almost pour onto baking sheet; it is easily spread with hands kept wet by rinsing in water.
_________________________________

Place yeast (and sugar if using) into container with warm water. In about 5 minutes, providing room is warm, this is ready to mix with flour. Pour about half of flour mix into large bowl with yeasty water; stir until incorporated; add a splash or two of oil; add more flour and stir more; continue until you have desired consistency which is not too sticky.

Leave dough to rise – Suggestion: cover bowl with plastic wrap and then a tea towel –place bowl over sauce pan full of hot tap water – this will assure good rising even when room is not hot. Depending on conditions, rising will take 1 or 2 hours.

Dust risen dough for rolling out – Oil large cookie sheet and roll dough with rolling pin, or you can use hands pounding and stretching. Once sheet is covered, lightly oil top of dough. Cover rolled dough with plastic wrap loosely and place cookie sheet over pan of hot tap water for
second rising.

When dough has risen, remove plastic and bake briefly in preheated at 450 . About 3 to 4 minutes should do to par-cook crust – this gives better crust results than putting toppings on raw dough. Remove par-cooked dough from oven and allow to briefly cool.

Dress the Crust with desired toppings – recommended order: sauce, cheese, chunky toppings. Bake again in 450 oven for between 5 and 10 minutes. You must watch because different thicknesses of topping will need more or less time. You can check edge of crust after first 5 minutes.

Corn Meal Option:

Sprinkle bottom of oiled cookie sheet with golden corn meal before rolling out dough. Adds a pleasant crispness and taste.

Note for variations in crust:

If you use about 1/2 to 2/3 more water, you will get a very sticky dough which cannot be rolled and must be spread out by hand. Doing this will yield a chewier crust filled with the air pockets characteristic of gourmet breads.

Another variation is to use Pastry Flour instead of All-purpose Flour and to incorpoate an egg white in the dough. Some gourmet pizzerias use a crust like this produces. It is good, but not my favorite.

Note for Foccacio: Dough is baked only once – 5 to 8 minutes at 450. Watch it for perfect light gold color. It is first brushed with oil and lightly sprinkled with coarse sea salt.

You may also very lightly sprinkle with parmesan grated. Try light lightly sprinkling with Rosemary. If you want garlic twist, crush a few cloves with salt in a mortar and pestle, then add to oil.


GENERAL TOPPING NOTES

Use my general red sauce from Eggplant parmesan (below). You may leave out pepper flakes or increase them as per your taste. In a pinch, use a good bottled sauce.

Toppings like Italian sausage or bacon should be lightly pan-cooked before putting on pizza. Cooking time for crust is not adequate for such raw ingredients to fully cook unless they are used in tiny slices.

Classic cheese topping is Mozzarella, but Mozzarella and Parmesan (or Asiago) or Fontina and Provolone (my favorite for a cheese pizza) are excellent. Grating the cheese works best for even melting.


A CLASSIC COMBINATION

Chunks of Sweet Italian Sausage and Onions (treated as above). Serve with simple green salad with red vinegar and oil dressing.


MY NICOISE PIZZA

Use chunks of canned tuna; Kalamata or Nicoise olives; thin slices of Fennel; Small par-boiled chunks of potato; small slices of par-boiled greenbeans; a few capers; anchovies; crumbled hard-boiled egg; ultra-thin tomato slices on bottom.

CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: EGGPLANT PARMESAN

CHUCKMAN'S EGGPLANT PARMESAN
A memorable dish

(Remember, this is a recipe not written down till recently. I use the pinch-and-peek-and-taste method when I cook like this.)


3 or 4 medium eggplants (or their large-sized equivalent) - peeled and cut in half lengthwise, then sliced into moderately thick slices.
You don't have to peel if you like the skin.

Parmesan cheese - grated - crucial that this be pretty decent stuff (no Kraft!).

Mozzarella cheese - grated as for pizza - again quality cheese is important - Tre Stella whole milk is very good. Lots of this.

Flour - sprinkled on plate for coating.

Breadcrumbs - sprinkled on plate for coating.

Eggs - beaten in a bowl for dipping to coat. Add a little milk to thin.

Salt - mixed in with flour - to taste. Be generous.

MY BASIC RED SAUCE:

Use crushed canned tomatoes (two large cans), a generous addition of dry white wine, a couple of anchovies or equivalent anchovy paste, a small can of tomato paste, a finely chopped onion, a sprinkling of Basil, a small sprinkling of red chilies (only enough to hint - sauce is not to be hot), and a couple of tablespoons of sugar. Bring to boil and simmer over low heat, covered, for maybe an hour.

Olive oil


Dip each slice of eggplant slice lightly in flour (salted), then in egg, then in breadcrumbs. The slices are then nicely fried till golden and put aside to cool (By the way, these themselves make a delicious snack or side dish).

Oil a large rectangular pyrex casserole-type oven pan.

Dribble a little sauce on bottom of pan. Place cool eggplant (fried) slices over bottom. Dribble sauce over. Sprinkle each type of cheese over (be generous), but suit your taste preferences on proportions. Do another layer, etc., until ingredients used up. Finish top with sauce and then cheese.

Bake in a not-very-high oven (250-300) with aluminum foil on top. Let this go awhile. Check in an hour. You want sauce to slowly thicken a bit and of course cheese to melt and bubble through. You have to judge. You'll need at least an hour of this slow cooking. Finish off in higher oven (say 350) with no cover (note if things got a little too dry, add a touch of sauce first.). Watch this carefully so it doesn't dry up too much.

The key to this cooking technique is to obtain a result of a thickened slush of sauce with savory cooked cheese baked in - this is my preference anyway.

Simpler: You could also just bake the whole thing, once assembled, in a regular fashion. Maybe about 350, uncovered, for not long, say 20 minutes. This will not be as nice. Again watch that it doesn't dry out.


VARIATIONS

Add Greek Kalamata olives to sauce.

Make a "putanesque" sauce by frying up some onion, garlic, and green pepper (all chopped finely). Add some capers, some Greek olives. This makes a very savory sauce for this or pasta - especially Penne Rigate.

CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: GOLDEN PUMPKIN RAISIN MUFFINS

CHUCKMAN'S GOLDEN PUMPKIN RAISIN MUFFINS

2 Cups All-purpose flour

2 Tsp Baking powder

1 Tsp Baking soda

1 Tsp Cinnamon

1 Tsp Nutmeg

1/2 Tsp Salt

3/4 Cup Brown sugar - packed

1 Egg - large

1/3 Cup Canola oil

2/3 Cup Buttermilk

11/2 Cup Pumpkin - canned

3/4 Cup Raisins

Zest from one large orange (Optional but recommended)

Juice from one large orange (Optional but recommended)


In one large bowl, combine and mix all dry ingredients. In separate bowl, whisk egg and other liquid ingredients plus raisins.

Combine and spoon into twelve baking cups.

Bake in preheated oven at 400° F for 22 to 28 minutes.
____________________________________________

Also good with currents, a small batch of cranberries, and walnuts.

CHUCKMAN ORIGINAL RECIPE: MOROCCAN LENTIL SOUP

I have been a serious cook for decades, this being one of the reasons I was able to serve as restaurant reviewer for a metropolitan newspaper. When I say "a serious cook," I mean someone who goes beyond using the recipes of others and creates his or her own. From time to time I will post some of mine.

JOHN'S MOROCCAN LENTIL SOUP

A rich thick soup, almost a stew, that smells like the perfumes of Arabia. Much like Asian cooking, the work here is all in the preparation of ingredients, such as chopping. Cooking is simple.

SPICES:

Salt to taste - maybe 1 Teaspoon (if you do not used canned stock which is already salty)
1 Teaspoon freshly-ground Black Pepper
1 Teaspoon ground Tumeric
2 Teaspoons ground Cumin
1/4 Teasoon ground Ginger/ or better, a little grated fresh
1 Teaspoon ground Cinnamon
1 Bay leaf (may be omitted)
Ideally a Pinch of Saffron - so expensive, I often do not use

NOTE:

The above spice mix is characteristic of Morocco - it may be used for roasting vegetables, too. You may increase proportionately if you like even stronger spicing.

VEGETABLES & MEAT:

2 19oz. Cans of Red (or green) Lentils. You start with dried, but there is little advantage once you've prepared and soaked.

4 Cups fresh Chicken Stock/ or 2 condensed cans diluted. If you want a thinner soup, use more. For vegetarian version see NOTE under Meat.

1 Can crushed Roma Tomatoes (buy whole and crush with potato masher).

1 Tablespoon Tomato Paste

About 1 Pound of hunks of lamb/ pork/ or chicken lightly sauteed Use inexpensive cut of lamb. You may have meats in chunks or slices or whole pieces of sauteed chicken.

NOTE: Skip meat and substitute vegetable stock for vegetarian version of soup.

Fresh Cilantro (if available) - Don't cook, chop up & sprinkle on finished soup. Also
good without.

2 Onions - chopped

4 Cloves Garlic - chopped

4 or 5 Stalks of Celery - chopped into thickish slices

1 Red Sweet Pepper - chopped into chucks

Lemon zest from half a lemon

OPTIONS:

1 or 2 Potatoes - diced and put in with vegetables.

1 Lemon - sliced very thin & sauteed lightly for relish on top of soup when served.

Croutons - made of baguette style bread, buttered and baked at 350 until lightly gold.

A Cup or Two of Couscous, cooked separately, and stirred in at finish.

EASY DIRECTIONS:

Put stock and tomatoes and spices including zest in a soup pot to simmer. Sautee onions, garlic, pepper, celery and tip into simmering stock mix.

Sautee meat just until browned very lightly and tip into stock mix. If using whole pieces of chicken, brown each nicely. Simmer the whole thing at least half an hour - I prefer a longer time to blend flavors.

Take a couple of ladles before serving and buzz in blender, returning to soup. Leave most of soup ingredients whole. This step not necessary, but nice for a thicker broth.

Serve with cilantro, thin lemon slices, and/or croutons. Warm pita is an excellent accompaniment.

BOOK REVIEW: RICHARD WATSON'S LIFE OF RENE DESCARTES

RICHARD WATSON'S LIFE OF RENE DESCARTES BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, January 28, 2005


This is truly a dreadful book.

The author attempts to do something loosely along the lines of Samuel Eliot Morison's "Admiral of the Ocean Sea," a fascinating, though dated, book that combines Morison's knowledge of the sea and sailing with a biography of Columbus. The author of "Cogito Ergo Sum," however, fails entirely.

In Wilson's effort - a very thin volume for a book purporting to be a biography of a major intellectual figure - we read almost as much about Wilson and his wife touring locations in Europe as we do about Descartes. The result is something a little like a poorly written script for one of those old corny school film strips.

Wilson never comes to grips with what makes Descartes great, and the vocabulary he uses - when he isn't saying things like "Gee!" or "Awesome!" - is that tiresome, annoying one typical of American social science academics of the second or third order.

The book actually contains errors regarding the period that even an amateur can spot.

This book is recommended only to be avoided.

BOOK REVIEW: W. JACKSON BATE'S SAMUEL JOHNSON

REVIEW OF W. JACKSON BATE'S SAMUEL JOHNSON BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, February 23, 2005


Samuel Johnson was a brilliant critic, perhaps the greatest English writer after Shakespeare, a fascinating eccentric, and a genuinely heroic man. The great merit of Mr. Bate's biography is that he succeeds in the magical illusion of bringing Johnson alive again, giving us a vivid sense of what it might have been like to know him.

The highest praise for this book is the regret you will feel when the pages end and Johnson's great figure bows out. The biography is that rare item, a genuinely inspiring book.

BOOK REVIEW: JANET WALLACH'S DESERT QUEEN

REVIEW OF JANET WALLACH'S DESERT QUEEN BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, February 23, 2005


This book should be required reading for all students of affairs in the Middle East, as well as for students of the great pageant of the British Empire. Here is the story of the remarkable woman who helped create modern Iraq.

Gertrude Bell was brilliant, gifted in languages, and ferociously brave. Ms. Bell travelled across deserts, climbed mountains, made contributions to archeology, served as an important intelligence source and an unusual diplomat, smoked in public, and sat as an equal with many fierce desert chieftains.

Her understanding of the Arabic people was sounder in many ways than the mystical nonsense of Lawrence of Arabia, a much better known figure.

I cannot call this a great book, for Janet Wallach is less than a great writer, but this is a good book on an important and neglected subject. Wallach brings us many interesting details of Gertrude Bell's extraordinary life.

BOOK REVIEW: WILLIAM HERNDON'S LINCOLN

REVIEW OF WILLIAM H. HERNDON'S LINCOLN BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, February 24, 2005


With a certain group of American historians, largely those concerned with preserving images of America's founders and luminaries as saintly figures in white plaster togas, this book remains controversial.

In fact, it is perhaps the greatest biography of an American historical figure ever written. It is recommended highly to all lovers of good biography. It is indispensible to serious students of American history.

The official defenders of America's Civic Religion dislike this book because it captures some raw and awkward aspects of Lincoln, but Lincoln was rather raw and awkward and self-taught. It is the rise of such a man to such heights, plus his great natural eloquence, that make Lincoln remarkable.

Such historians love to cite this or that relatively insignificant error (in a 500-page book replete with details) to discredit Herndon, but Herndon's own detail and sense of honesty make him the best argument against such foolishness.

No one was better qualified than Herndon to record the life of Lincoln, having been his friend and business partner for many years. Herndon also conscientiously compiled a large archive of letters and memorials after Lincoln's death.

Herndon focuses on the personal Lincoln, and it is especially his observations about Lincoln's religious skepticism and family life that so disturb those who would have Lincoln embalmed like Lenin. Herndon gives us a vivid Lincoln, and if you like good biography, you will be impressed. The book was clearly a labor of love, and that fact still comes through more than a century after it was written.

BOOK REVIEW: GERALD POSNER'S CASE CLOSED

REVIEW OF GERALD POSNER'S CASE CLOSED BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, February 25, 2005


There has been an industry in Kennedy assassination books, with nearly half of them ridiculous and nearly another half having no integrity. In my judgment, Mr. Posner's book belongs to the latter category.

Posner's book not only contains errors, it brings nothing fresh to the controversy. Posner simply re-interpreted parts of the body of old evidence according to his inclination, and he is an awkward writer. But it is the body of evidence itself which is in question, or at least many important parts of it.

Anyone interested in the Kennedy assassination couldn't help noticing this lamentable book being widely reviewed and praised in the mainline press. You must ask yourself, why would that be, when other very able books went largely ignored?

The Warren Commission was only a prosecutor's brief, and a fairly poor one at that. Indeed, the Commission itself investigated almost nothing, relying entirely on Hoover's FBI for investigative work.

Shortly before the Warren Report was released, Bertrand Russell issued sixteen questions about the assassination. Having seen an advance copy, he knew the Report would answer none of them.

To this day, there is no answer to his questions, and most especially this one: "If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?"

In the case put forward by the Warren Commission, and echoed by writers like Posner, the assassination boils down to an ordinary murder which should be a matter of no secrecy.

Russell's question echoes again and again down the decades as adjustments are made to the official story. Employing techniques one expects to be used for covering up long-term intelligence interests, various points raised by early independent researchers like Joachim Joesten have been conceded here or there along the way without altering the central finding. This is an effective method: concede details and appear open to new facts while always forcefully returning to the main point.

A significant writer along these lines is Edward Jay Epstein, an author whose other writing suggests intelligence connections. His first book on the assassination, "Inquest," conceded numerous flaws in the Warren Report. Epstein went on in subsequent books, "Counterplot" and "Legend" to attack at length - and for the critical reader, quite unconvincingly - ideas of conspiracy, Oswald's intelligence connections, and his innocence.

Posner's book is nothing more than a continuation along the same line of effort.

If you only ever read one book on the Kennedy assassination, it should not be Posner's. That book should be "Conspiracy" by Anthony Summers(5 STARS) with absolutely first-class investigative journalism and a clear and compelling narrative.

"Conspiracy," now aging in some aspects, was startling when published, not startling because of extreme claims, but startling for its skilled marshaling of a huge body of facts. It is done so well, you will not be able to put it down.

And if you still insist on reading Posner, you really owe it to yourself also to read Summers.

BOOK REVIEW: CONOR O'BRIEN'S THE LONG AFFAIR

REVIEW OF CONOR O'BRIEN'S THE LONG AFFAIR BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, February 25, 2005


This is, quite simply, one of the most important books ever written about Jefferson. It redresses the terrible imbalance created by American historians who think of the Founding Fathers as the Twelve Apostles re-incarnated. Critics of the book should understand that O'Brien is a world-class scholar.

When O'Brien published "The Long Affair," about Thomas Jefferson and his peculiar admiration for the bloody excesses of the French Revolution, the Sage for Archer Daniels Midland (aka George Will) went into a word-strewn fit over the book. I think Will's excesses speak to the quality of most criticism of the book.

Perhaps, the single thing about the book that most upset George was O'Brien's comparison of a statement of Jefferson's to something Pol Pot might have said. Jefferson wrote in 1793, at the height of the Terror, "...but rather than it [the French Revolution] should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is." George wrote off Jefferson's brutal statement as "epistolary extravagance," and attacked O'Brien for using slim evidence for an extreme conclusion about an American "hero."

George went so far as favorably to compare the work of Ken Burns with that of O'Brien, calling Burns "an irrigator of our capacity for political admiration," as compared to one who "panders" to "leave our national memory parched."

I mean no disparagement of Ken Burns, but he produces the television equivalent of coffee-table books. O'Brien is a scholar, the author of many serious books. The very comparison, even without the odd language, tells us something about George.

But language, too, is important. The irony is that George's own words, "irrigator of our capacity for political admiration," sound frighteningly like what we'd expect to hear from the Ministry of Culture in some ghastly place (dare I write it?) such as Pol Pot's Cambodia.

But George should have known better. This letter of Jefferson's is utterly characteristic of views he expressed many different ways. Jefferson quite blithely wrote that America's Constitution would not be adequate to defend what he called liberty, that there would have to be a new revolution every 15 or 20 years, and that the tree of liberty needed to be nourished regularly with a fresh supply of patriot blood.

Jefferson's well-known sentimental view of the merits of sturdy yeomen farmers as citizens of a republic and his intense dislike for industry and urbanization bear an uncanny resemblance to Pol Pot's beliefs. Throwing people out of cities to become honorable peasants back on the land, even those who never saw a farm, was precisely how Pol Pot managed to kill at least a million people in Cambodia.

What is it about many of those on the right relishing the deaths of others in the name of ideology? You see, much like the "chickenhawks" now running Washington, sending others off to die, Jefferson never lifted a musket during the Revolution. While serving as governor of Virginia, he set a pathetic example of supporting the war's desperate material needs. He also gave us a comic-opera episode of dropping everything and running feverishly away from approaching British troops in Virginia (there was an official inquiry over the episode). Jefferson turned down his first diplomatic appointment to Europe by the new government out of fear of being captured by British warships, a fear that influenced neither Benjamin Franklin nor John Adams.

But real heroes aren't always, or even usually, soldiers. Jefferson, despite a long and successful career and a legacy of fine words (expressing thoughts largely cribbed from European writers), cannot be credited with any significant personal sacrifice over matters of principle during his life. He wouldn't give up luxury despite his words about slavery. He never risked a serious clash with the Virginia Establishment over slave laws during his rise in state politics. And in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, he lamely and at length blamed the king of England for the slave trade, yet, when he wrote the words, it was actually in his interest to slow the trade and protect the value of his existing human holdings.

Unlike Mr. Lincoln later, who had none of his advantages of education and good social contacts, Jefferson did not do well as a lawyer. He never earned enough to pay his own way, his thirst for luxury far outstripping even the capacity of his many high government positions and large number of slaves to generate wealth. Again, unlike Mr. Lincoln, Jefferson was not especially conscientious about owing people money, and he frequently continued buying luxuries like silver buckles and fine carriages while he still owed substantial sums.

Jefferson spent most of his productive years in government service, yet he never stopped railing against the evils of government. There's more than a passing resemblance here to the empty slogans of government-service lifers like Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich who enjoy their government pensions and benefits even as they still complain about government. Jefferson's most famous quote praises the least possible government, yet, as President, he brought a virtual reign of terror to New England with his attempts to enforce an embargo against England (the "Anglomen" as this very prejudiced man typically called the English).

Jefferson, besides having some truly ridiculous beliefs, like those about the evils of central banks or the health efficacy of soaking your feet in ice water every morning, definitely had a very dark side. Any of his political opponents would readily have testified to this. Jefferson was the American Machiavelli.

It was this side of him that put Philip Freneau on the federal payroll in order to subsidize the man's libelous newspaper attacks on Washington's government - this while Jefferson served in that very government. At another point, Jefferson hired James Callender to dig up and write filth about political opponents, an effort which backfired when Callender turned on Jefferson for not fulfilling promises. Callender famously dug out and publicized the story about Sally Hemings, Jefferson's slave-mistress, his late wife's illegitimate half-sister (slavery made for some amazing family relationships), a story we now know almost certainly to be true (by the way, dates point to Sally's beginning to serve Jefferson in this capacity at 13 or 14 years old). It was this dark side of Jefferson that resulted in a ruthless, years-long vendetta against Aaron Burr for the sin of appearing to challenge Jefferson's election to the presidency.

Jefferson expressed himself in embarrassingly clear terms about his belief in black inferiority. And it is important to note that in doing so, he violated one of his basic principles of remaining skeptical and not accepting what was not proved, so this, clearly, was something he believed deeply. There is also reliable evidence that on one occasion he was observed by a visitor beating a slave, quite contradicting Jefferson's public-relations pretensions to saintly paternalism.

When Napoleon sent an army attempting to subdue the slaves who had revolted and formed a republic on what is now Haiti, President Jefferson gave his full consent and support to the bloody (and unsuccessful) effort.

Hero? I have no idea how George Will defines the word, but by any meaningful standard, Jefferson utterly fails.

Read the book, and decide for yourself.

BOOK REVIEW: PETER ACKROYD'S DICKENS

REVIEW OF PETER ACKROYD'S DICKENS BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, February 28, 2005


There are some oddities in the style of Mr. Ackroyd, and his book contains some, what might be called, experimental chapters, fantasies or dreams or prose poems on subjects the author associates with Dickens. Ordinarily, I would find these things a bit off-putting.

But Mr. Ackroyd succeeds in giving us an overwhelmingly animated and penetrating portrait of the great Victorian author. This huge book - and no smaller effort could capture Dickens' spirit - crackles with energy, the very kind of driving energy so characteristic of Dickens himself.

Dickens was a strange man with immense drives and desires going off in many directions and personal habits that might well at times be regarded as unbalanced. He was not the sentimental, storytelling Victorian father figure he is sometimes regarded, although he could be quite sentimental about family and friends and his storytelling ability had few equals.

He behaved at times as a petty tyrant and was highly opinionated, always a man of immense curiosity, a traveler, a political activist, a generous man, a workaholic, a man eager for every possible shred of success and acclaim, a talented actor and mimic, a man seemingly possessed at times, as when carrying on conversations with himself, imitating his own characters in a mirror or going for walks as long as twenty miles alone or living with the ghosts of his fractured childhood.

A whirlwind of experience and desires helped make this naturally talented man such a great novelist. There are similarities to the titanic storm that was Beethoven. In both cases, the young man in his first blush of success could be truly charming while the aging figure could be quite unsettling.

The book contains many interesting anecdotes and details of Dickens' England, as well as Dickens' America since he made two journeys to America, a place he both hated and was fascinated by.

Highly recommended to all lovers of good biography, all students of English literature, and all students of English history.

BOOK REVIEW: AVI SHLAIM'S THE IRON WALL

REVIEW OF AVI SHLAIM'S THE IRON WALL BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, March 2, 2005


Let me start by advising that this is a dry book to read, so it is not for the average reader of narrative history. But its meticulous scholarship makes it an indispensable book about affairs in the Middle East.

People sometimes use the phrase "meticulous scholarship" to send up a warning flag that you had better not argue with what follows. But that is not so here. This book represents genuine scholarship, serving neither the purpose of public relations for Israel nor an attack upon it.

After offering some background on the origins of Zionism, Mr. Shlaim's theme is a review of the first half-century of Israeli policy. The title, an expression coined by an early Zionist, aptly sums up the thrust of that policy.

The author goes where scholarship leads, and he does not flinch from including less-than-heroic episodes that many contemporary books and news sources ignore.

Of course, in some matters of extreme sensitivity, there are still no adequate official documents available to scholars. In such cases, Mr. Schlaim tells us what he knows and goes no farther, leaving us with full confidence in his integrity.

I do not see how anyone can consider him- or herself well-informed on the Middle East without having read this book. It truly is that important.

BOOK REVIEW: RICHARD RUSSO'S STRAIGHT MAN

RICHARD RUSSO'S STRAIGHT MAN BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, March 4, 2005


This has to be one of the funniest books ever written.

Russo brilliantly sends up the pretensions and foibles of the staff and administration of the English Department at a small Pennsylvania university. It's one of those truly dismal, mediocre places, rarely mentioned in the same breath as America's world-class institutions, but which abound across the country.

About the first third of this book is almost non-stop laughter. The pace slows for a while, but picks up again. Near the end Russo gives us one of the funniest scenes ever written. I wouldn't want to reveal any of it to spoil your enjoyment.

The book is a departure for Russo, most of whose novels are reworkings of another theme, his childhood relationship with his very unusual father. Russo's effort along these lines reached its highest achievement in the modern masterpiece, "Nobody's Fool."

BOOK REVIEW: THOMAS FIEDMAN'S LEXUS AND OLIVE TREE

THOMAS FRIEDMAN'S LEXAS AND OLIVE TREE BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, March 11, 2005


It is stunning how little Thomas Friedman understands about globalization, but that didn't stop him from writing a book about it.

Friedman's tone reminds me of the bluff guy who sweeps up to you in a bar, slaps you on the back and starts pouring out the fast-paced patter of a top-producing aluminum-siding salesman. Friedman's goal in every paragraph is to close a sale and unload as much product on you at as high a price as possible.

Most of what we call growth and science goes back only about 500 years to the Renaissance. Before that for centuries people stayed in the same little village, spoke the same words, went to the same church, and in general knew nothing their fathers and mothers didn't know. All great events like the "Enclosures" in England or the "Industrial Revolution" were steps in the same relentless march forward.

Globalization is just the latest manifestation of a now-constant flow of changing technology inducing permanent, long-term economic change. It promises to be a very troubling and unsettled period as local customs, habits, laws, and even languages come under great stress of huge and rapid changes. It is not unrealistic to anticipate revolutions, civil wars, and great human migrations coming out of these changes over the next century or so, just as industrialization or enclosures generated many social and political disturbances.

Ironically enough, America itself, despite its status as world economic power, faces huge problems adjusting to these sweeping, inevitable changes in the world. Ordinary Americans are going to have to make big adjustments in their expectations (the so-called American dream), and there is going to be huge pressure to participate in new and expanding international institutions required to regulate these massive changes.

The modern nation state evolved directly out of these forces, but as the process goes on, the nation state itself will feel heavy forces of erosion. All of this, of course, is in directions opposite to America's present course.

But don't look for a clear explanation of any of this from Friedman. Friedman's sales pitch includes a call to making the world safe for McDonald's, Pepsi, and America Online. The tone is genuinely depressing.

Friedman's gems include belittling Silicon-Valley executives who stress their international identity. Like a stereotype of the ugly American, Friedman bellows, "Oh, yeah? Then, the next time I.B.M. China gets in trouble in China, call Jiang Zemin for help."

Does Friedman truly think high-tech business can be global without concessions to local interests? Think of car plants today. No government allows you to just keep exporting cars. Sooner or later you build a local plant, and you adapt to local conditions. You certainly obey local laws. And you certainly hire mostly local people. America's F-16s, the kinds of things Friedman is so fond of referring to, don't change any of that.

This book represents a kind of catch-22 for Americans. If they embrace Friedman's parochial, beat-the-drum-for-America attitude, they will only be even less prepared for the unavoidable era of dramatic change coming.

BOOK REVIEW: GORDON WOOD'S RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

GORDON WOOD'S RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION , March 11, 2005


Mr. Wood's book tries to put some intellectual and moral sizzle back into an American Revolution that has long come to be regarded by world scholars as something less than an earth-shaking event.

Despite much-labored efforts, Mr. Wood fails, and he is pretty dull along the way in presenting his case. It really could not be otherwise, for his basic thesis is faulty. The Revolution has been summed up, quite accurately I believe, as a group of home-grown aristocrats taking power from a group of foreign-born aristocrats.

America's central myth about its founding goes something like this: An extraordinary bunch of men, dressed in frock coats and wearing powdered wigs, closeted together after a long and heroic war against tyranny, worked unselfishly to give the United States a perfect modern system of government.

These notions manage to get thoroughly muddled with Puritan religious ones that have been around since America's colonial days, producing a story with strong overtones of a biblical legend.

This set of myths and attitudes has been called America's Civic Religion, and it is an apt name. Gordon Woods does not seriously question this fuzzy, half-mythical view.

The first truly important cause for American independence was Britain's victory in the French and Indian War (more generally called the Seven Year's War). The French in the 1750s were setting about constructing a series of forts both along the Canadian border and in places like the Ohio river valley. Their intention was to prevent the westward expansion of the British colonies and to lock up much of the valuable fur trade.

British colonists did not look favorably on this development. Their intense desire was to become rich through land speculation and endless westward expansion, the kind of activity, apart from marrying a rich widow, that made George Washington one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, one with rather a reputation for sharp business practices.

The colonists were used to a rather privileged position that none of them wanted disturbed. They lived a healthy and relatively happy life, as all the statistics and observations of the time attest. Foreign observers frequently commented on how healthy Americans under the Crown were. As well, it was widely observed, and commented on in Europe, that these colonies - well before the Revolution - were amongst the freest places in the world to live.

Britain did win the war, but at considerable cost. The colonies' first reaction to British victory was joy and celebration. It was later that a series of what can only be regarded as reasonable tax measures to have the colonists help pay the costs of the war aroused such great antipathy in the colonies. The view was simply this: The war was over, the benefits to the colonists could not be re-claimed by Britain, so the colonists felt no obligation to help pay beyond what they had contributed during the war. Hatred of taxes - unavoidably associated with crippling good, sound government - has remained to this day a feature of the American cultural landscape.

So, after the French and Indian War, things at first looked favorable for the desires of settlers to build limitless land empires, but then several developments considerably darkened the view.

A key one was the Quebec Act which vastly extended the territory of Quebec to include what today is Illinois as part of a vast Quebec Territory. Most Americans will not know what a huge storm this caused in the colonies because it is not an attractive subject for elementary texts.

First, it appeared to make the possibility of endless western expansion impossible. England, quite fairly and reasonably, wanted to discourage expansion over the Appalachians into Indian territory like the Ohio valley as a way of maintaining peace. The Mother Country had a conscientious policy of avoiding further conflicts with native Americans. This policy American colonists had tended to ignore, but the creation of a new Western jurisdiction under a Catholic province like Quebec, was an entirely different matter.

There was a paranoid fear of "papism" in the colonies, peopled as they were by many Puritan extremists who had run away from the dislike they often aroused in the old country. Anti-Catholic feeling ran very high in the American colonies. Indeed, it was an old custom, and remained the custom for decades after the Revolution, to burn effigies of the pope each year on Britain's Guy Fawkes Day. America's nasty-tempered Puritan settlers wanted nothing to do with "papists." Yes, the very same nasty, hateful words we heard during the Northern Ireland conflict over the last thirty years were constantly on the tongues and in the newspapers of American colonists.

Britain's final reaction to the colonists' refusal to pay taxes, after a long period of adjustments in the taxes and talks with colonial representatives, and to their contempt for Imperial regulations over boundaries and trade - many of the colonies' richest men such as John Hancock were simply smugglers - triggered an authentic "grass-roots" revolt in Massachusetts.

When the unthinkable actually happened in Massachusetts - violent revolt being originally unthinkable for most well-known and established colonial figures like Franklin or Washington or John Adams - there was no going back. The central issue became one of how things were to be managed by the colonies' ambitious little Establishment.

Washington's appointment as commander-in-chief represented an important turning point. What had been an almost spontaneous revolt organized by militia groups who elected their leaders became an organized opposition with an organized army under an appointed commander who suddenly started lashing and hanging volunteers who didn't obey orders or show proper respect. Washington, the cold Virginia aristocrat, expressed contempt in his letters for the New England militiamen who had taken all the chances and started the whole business. He wanted to command a real army with smart uniforms and traditional discipline just like the British army he so admired. He had been frustrated for years about getting a permanent commission in the British army, something that was then rarely awarded to colonials.

The real lessons of the American Revolution include the fact that early Americans were not motivated by quite the high ideals that contemporary Americans generally attribute to them. Anti-Catholicism and greed for Western expansion were basic causes. So, too, antipathy to taxes. Still, given enough time, America outgrew some of these early narrow prejudices.

Many will recall that the Pulitzer Prize for journalism has been awarded to mediocrity and even downright fraud, but this book is the perfect example of how little the Pulitzer Prize for history means as a guide to quality and stimulating work. Perhaps this generalization is true of all prizes, but it has been egregiously so in the case of the Pulitzer.

BOOK REVIEW: EDWARD J. EPSTEIN'S ASSASSINATION CHRONICLES

EDWARD J. EPSTEIN ASSASSINATION CHRONICLES BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, April 1, 2005


The Assassination Chronicles consists of three short books - Inquest, Counterplot, and Legend - written over a period of about a dozen years and combined into one volume.

Inquest established Epstein's bona fides on the Kennedy assassination and is the most readable volume. It is essentially an effort to concede criticisms of early and penetrating critics such as Joachim Joesten while preserving the Warren Commission's central findings intact. It contains pretty much nothing that others had not already said by the time of its publication.

Other writing of Epstein's suggests intelligence connections, and his handling of the issues around the assassination tend very much to serve official interests.

If you are informed on the hard facts of the assassination, Counterplot and Legend are almost unreadable. There is a palpable sense of reading a case against an accused without a word from the defense. These are not investigations in any meaningful sense of the word. Epstein assumes the role of Judge Warren without the judicial robes, dressed instead in the deceivingly casual dress of a supposedly authentic critic.

There is no explanation to this day for the secrecy that still surrounds important parts of the Kennedy assassination, and it is this secrecy that blurs and distorts so much of the key evidence. Were this not so, books like Epstein's would not be published. Except for the concessions made in his first volume, Inquest, Epstein simply does not deal with the case's central issues of missing evidence, weak evidence, and implausible evidence. He stands ready to accuse and judge a man who had no motive, almost no means, and against whom what genuine facts we have would never convince a conscientious jury.

Something terribly significant has been kept from the world for more than forty years since the assassination, and books like The Assassination Chronicles, or Gerald Posner's update, aka Case Closed, are significant efforts along the way to keeping it that way.

One can only speculate on the reasons for all the secrecy, including the possibility that the CIA and FBI never understood who was responsible. Now, there was a state secret worth keeping in a time of Cold War paranoia. And the secrecy concerns are still valid. After all, the CIA and the FBI blew it on the imminent fall of the Soviet Union and on the activities of the 9/11 gang who entered the U.S. with legally-issued visas to take flying lessons.

No one should read this book without also reading Anthony Summers' monumental work of genuine investigation, Conspiracy.

BOOK REVIEW: IAN KERSHAW'S HITLER (VOLUMES 1 AND 2)

IAN KERSHAW'S HITLER (VOLUMES 1 & 2) BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, April 6, 2005


This biography (actually two volumes, Hubris and Nemesis) is well worth reading. Kershaw is a sound, if not elegant, writer and tells a story you will want to finish, but the book has significant faults.

Historians still do not know exactly how to reckon with the phenomenon of Hitler. The man was like a giantic cyclonic storm that suddenly welled up and unleashed death and misery on a colossal scale.

And for that reason he stands as the most influential man of the 20th century, not the greatest or the most gifted, but the most influential.

His existence brought to life such memorable opponents as Churchill, his defeat established forty years of Soviet dominance over much of Europe, and his beastial acts unquestionably led to the founding of modern Israel, setting off great difficulties in the Middle East for decades.

The ironic thing about Kershaw's book is that the author says he does not understand Hitler. Hitler remains a mystery to him, and Kershaw even says that in some ways his book is not a biography of the man but of the era in Germany. This is not satisfying to the reader wishing to understand better.

Kershaw's thesis of Hitler as a an almost compulsive gambler who struck it lucky for a while is weak. Hitler's rise to lead a great nation of Europe and his years of early diplomatic and military victories call for a more insightful explanation than a heavy run of luck. Kershaw gives credit to Hitler as an instinctive propagandist (in advertising terms, a talented marketer), but that is about as far as he goes to explaining this eye of the greatest storm in human history.

Historians, naturally enough, are reluctant to write anything that could be interpreted as admiration, but other historians have managed a better job of dealing with Hitler's talents and personality, notably Alan Bullock, Joachim Fest, and William Shirer.

One new element that Kershaw brings is a focus on Hitler's being responsible for the Holocaust, not that any responsible historian ever has denied it, but naturally enough there is no paper trail. I think Shirer is better on the horrors Hitler inflicted. I also think a more insightful treatment of this kind of psychology is found in Gitta Sereny.

One of the great mysteries of Hitler's psychology is his anti-Semitism. There is just no accounting for its immensity, and Kershaw does little to enlighten us here.

Read this book and the other authors I have mentioned and decide whether you agree with me that the definitive biography of Hitler has yet to be written.

BOOK REVIEW: PAT BARKER'S REGENERATION TRILOGY

PAT BARKER'S REGENERATION TRILOGY REVIEWED BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, April 6, 2005


The Regeneration Trilogy is both wonderful and disappointing, an odd combination of characteristics for a set of novels, but then the First World War itself was characterized by heroic exhileration and utter dispair, by encrusted tradition and unanticipated revolution, by invention and backwardness.

Ms Barker takes us to an institution, a quiet and somewhat remote place, seemingly safe from the savagery of the Western Front, where damaged men are sent in hopes of recovery. She quickly has us involved in several fascinating characters, the full extent of whose experiences she only gradually reveals. Most interestingly, the characters of the men themselves are only gradually revealed, as often to our horror as satisfaction.

After reading the first volume, I could hardly wait for the second. It was the third volume I found disappointing. The disappointment comes through what she does with characters we have become intensely interested in, but I'll not reveal any details and leave it to new readers to see whether they agree.

The characterizations of the first two volumes are wonderful (although I am not a great fan of mixing real people in with fictional characters, the practice does not feature too heavily), and Ms. Barker gives us a remarkable sense of what that terrible war meant, particularly in ordinary lives on the home front.

Ms. Barker's trilogy is highly recommended for those interested in history, students of human psychology, and those who enjoy good writing and a gripping story.

BOOK REVIEW: SHELBY FOOTE'S CIVIL WAR TRILOGY

SHELBY FOOTE'S CIVIL WAR TRILOGY REVIEWED BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, April 6, 2005


Shelby Foote's trilogy of the American Civil War has been called America's Iliad and Odyssey, and in some ways it is an apt comparison.

The Trojan War certainly held a comparable place for ancient Greeks as America's Civil War holds for contemporary Americans. I've always wondered why this should be so.

I think there are several major reasons. First, the anvil of the Civil War is where America's rise to world power is hammered out. Lincoln, in the long-term view, is less the Patriarch who frees slaves than he is the successful Corporate Lawyer who forges the nation into a feared industrial and military power. The Civil War is revolutionary for America's status, just as the Great War marked the beginning of the decline for Great Britain.

Second, in a country that has never really quite experienced the horrors of war in the modern era (American deaths for example in World War Two were a little more than half of one-percent of the fifty million lives total, and losses in the First War were almost insignificant out of total losses), the Civil War stands as America's time of great sacrifice and bloodshed.

There is also the myth and color around the nature of the Old South, stuff about gentlemen, honor, and manliness. Southerners certainly accepted this dreamy view, at least the small number with money, while the other dirt-poor farmers were bound to them through dread of Blacks and the feared effects of slavery's end. Northerners, too, came to accept the colorful myths, and many still do. Southern culture of course was based on slavery, and it was a brutal culture in many aspects, but America has never really come to grips with slavery in its history, and the myths are appealing.

Mr. Foote collected some wonderful, colorful anecdotes about the daring deeds or marvelous escapes of leading characters in his long narrative. The telling of these tales does remind one of Homer's various intense scenes with leading characters preparing for or engaging in combat. These come like delightful arias in a long opera.

Certainly, Mr. Foote has captured the great panorama of the Civil War, at least in its military aspects. Some might think the three-thousand pages of narrative a bit excessive, but fans of the Civil War and those who like a good yarn that lasts and lasts will greatly enjoy the books.

Comparisons with Homer may be taken too far. Homer was a poet. Shelby Foote's prose are sturdy and workman-like.

Mr. Foote does not deal with all political, social, and economic dimensions of the Civil War, but then that isn't his job, just as it wasn't Homer's.

This raises a possible philosophical criticism of the work. To a certain extent, with the work's color and sweep and bold deeds, Mr. Foote could be charged somewhat with helping to perpetuate the myths of the Old South, but this is not a point I would want to insist on because those who want to fully understand the Civil War must read other books. This one does just what it sets out to do.

BOOK REVIEW: D.J.TAYLOR'S THE LIFE OF ORWELL

REVIEW OF D. J. TAYLOR'S ORWELL THE LIFE BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, April 13, 2005


This is a difficult book to categorize. It is well written, contains many interesting anecdotes, but it misses the essential Orwell.

Taylor's gloomy, otherwordly, ex-Etonian, ex-imperial policeman simply does not add up to Orwell. The sum of the parts is much less than the man. Taylor's book is a bit like an autopsy, the pathologist clearly never being able to comprehend the stiff, dead flesh and bottled samples before him as the full human being they were. Nevertheless, autopsies do tell interesting tales.

Orwell's gloomy temperament puts him not outside the mainstream of writers but exactly in the company of so many important writers. The list of writers with some form of depression, whether alcoholism or gloominess, is so huge - Greene, Swift, Hemingway, Le Carré, Dickens, Gissing, O'Neill, Twain, Faulkner, etc, etc. - one comes to think of the quality almost as a job requirement. It provides one of the special lens through which critical writers see the world. One has to believe Taylor understands this, but his book conveys only clinical observations of gloominess snipped from letters, diaries, and conversations.

As far as Orwell's otherworldliness, Orwell was clearly in the great tradition of English eccentrics, and that is an important component of his appeal. There is a long and glorious line of them from Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen down to Alec Guinness, Margaret Rutherford, and Vanessa Redgrave. Yet Taylor only offers clinical observations and never puts them in their proper context.

Orwell was not an important novelist, so it seems a bit gratuitous to say so as Taylor does. In fact, he wasn't even a very good novelist. Yet books like Keep the Aspadistra Flying do provide a keen sense of his Englishness. Missing entirely from Taylor's autopsy is a sense of Orwell's quintessential Englishness. When Orwell writes of getting back to the feel of heavy English coins and having mahogany tea, readers get a sense of pure distilled Englishness. This comes through also in quasi-journalistic books like The Road to Wigan Pier or Down and Out in Paris and London - important early efforts at what today might be called investigative journalism - books which Taylor rather disparages both in terms of Orwell's re-arranging actual events and being an observer mentally wearing an Eton tie.

What Orwell was is a critic, and a rather magnificent one. I am reminded of Degas' description of Monet as "Only an eye, but what an eye!"

Orwell had an exquisite sense of justice and a very sensitive barometer for tyranny plus he had the words to convey vividly his sensibilities. Taylor virtually misses this in his examination of bile and stool samples. Taylor too often puts Orwell's political criticism down to miss-directed, soft-Left thinking of an ex-Etonian. Orwell himself recognized the simpering nature of much of the Left's views, yet he struggled bravely with finding a vocabulary to accommodate his sympathies. He possibly did not come to recognize himself for what he was, a scorching critic of both Left and Right. After all, his time was short. That is how it is when you die in your forties.

He was also an important literary critic, and while Taylor recognizes this, I don't believe he gives it a full enough examination.

Taylor sadly drags out the subject of anti-Semitism, perhaps the most overly-used epithet of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. If Orwell was anti-Semitic - and I do not believe this for a second - it was in the same vague sense of virtually all Englishmen of his time. The English have always had a degree of xenophobia, a quality whose obverse side is the very set of qualities defining Englishness. I am tired of discussions of whether Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice makes the greatest playwright in human history anti-Semitic, discussions which always ignore the human qualities and sense of justice Shakespeare gives his character, and just so, Orwell, overall a truly decent man.

There has been a good deal of writing in recent years about Orwell, much of it wrong-headed, from claims being made that he would have supported Bush's invasion of Iraq (!) to sentimentality. Little of it captures Orwell the independent and remarkably clear-thinking critic. Taylor gives us no sense of what it was that animated Orwell, other than some almost silly stuff about getting back at people like the headmistress of his school. There is almost a sense in this book of a high-class hatchet job done on Orwell, but I don't want to push that point. What makes Orwell truly important is minimized, and what wasn't important is given a good deal of weight. Perhaps that is the fate of great critics who support no one's ideologies and preconceptions.

This book should be read only with an awareness of its limited approach to the subject. This is not Orwell, but a somewhat interesting display of bits and memorabilia in museum cabinets.

Please see my review of Gordon Bowker's Orwell biography, a superior work (published in the same year) in most respects to Taylor's.

BOOK REVIEW: ANN WROE'S THE PERFECT PRINCE

REVIEW OF ANN WROE'S THE PERFECT PRINCE BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, April 25, 2005


The subject of this book is one of those remarkable stories of someone who may have been a prince escaped from murder or a clever and well-tutored imposter. This is the Anastasia story of England in the late 1400s. Was the subject of this book Richard Plantangenet, Duke of York, second son of Edward IV, or one Perkin Warbeck (a name with various spellings including Werbecque) from Tournai in what today is Belgium? Ms. Wroe, while telling an interesting story and enlightening us on many of the story's complexities, does not solve the mystery.

A bit of the background to the Prince Richard/Warbeck story is known to many through Shakespeare's wonderful play, Richard III, where Richard's nephews, the sons of Edward IV, are murdered in the Tower at Richard's command. But Shakespeare was concerned with drama and human character and notoriously inaccurate in his histories. The legend of a hideous, spidery Richard III is no more valid than the story of Anne Boleyn, mother of Elizabeth I, having bizarre markings plus an extra finger on one hand, a story which served the interests of Henry VIII in demonizing his legally-murdered wife.

Shakespeare's Richard was the creation of several writers, notably Sir Thomas More, a truly nasty piece of work always ready to burn "heretics" alive and yet coming down to us in popular history as the noble "Man for All Seasons." More wrote to please and flatter the Tudors.

Richard's character is today regarded as heroic, and it is not certain at all that he had the young princes murdered, as indeed it is not certain that the princes were murdered. Richard's terrible death on Bosworth Field marked the start of Henry Tudor's reign as Henry VII, father of tyrant Henry VIII and grandfather of the redoubtable Elizabeth Gloriana.

Wroe's book has a number of faults. First is a stylistic tendency for a dreamy drifting-off from the narrative with paragraphs of associations and tidbits of obscure fact. You might call this illustrating the manuscript. Some find it appealing, and so do I when it is not overdone, but it can be irritating, as it sometimes is here, reminding me somewhat of the excesses of Fernand Braudel in The Identity of France.

For someone concerned with a display of detailed and even obscure scholarship in the early part of the book, Wroe, in the latter part, offers some almost naively simple scenes. In speaking of Warbeck's confession at his execution, for example, Wroe says, "The last thing they [the condemned] did was to speak falsehoods. It is almost unthinkable that Henry would have forced such a thing on Perkin, or that he would have agreed to do it."

Nonsense. Invariably at public executions of important or notable persons, they confessed their guilt, just as virtually all accused did at Stalin's show trials. The King's powers were too sweeping for it to be otherwise. In the case of treason, individuals were hung before being taken down, still alive, to be disemboweled and castrated, then to be drawn and quartered. A nod from the King allowed death to occur mercifully on the gallows. Also in the case of treason, the condemned person's children could be turned into paupers through confiscation of all property, or they could be treated with some degree of leniency. The wife and any relatives faced terrible possibilities were the death not an acceptable one (Warbeck left a wife and a son in England).

The book's index is inadequate, a considerable fault in a book about an era in which spelling was almost guesswork. The name Warbeck, for example, is not listed alphabetically for at least a cross-reference.

Still, this is a book worth reading, and, at times, it flows nicely.

BOOK REVIEW: LISA JARDINE'S ROBERT HOOKE

REVIEW OF LISA JARDINE'S ROBERT HOOKE BY JOHN CHUCKMAN , May 4, 2005


Robert Hooke's life was curious, a neglected topic that makes good reading, although a full, living sense of this man is missing from the book.

He was an ingenious, creative man, abounding with energy and interests in his younger years, whose acquaintances and friends included Boyle, Pepys, and Wren. He was widely recognized as a physics and general science experimenter of exceptional ability - a designer of both accurate instruments and experiments in which to employ them - almost certainly the greatest of his day. He might be viewed from today's perspective as something of the Ernest Lawrence of his day versus the great theorists.

Hooke's interests included astronomical measurements, microscopy, fossils, watches, the behavior of gases, and more. He was also interested in theoretical concepts although his mathematical abilities fell far short of people like Newton or Leibniz. Still, he came up with the hypothesis of the inverse-square law for gravity which he sent to Newton, asking him to prove mathematically whether it was valid. Newton never gave Hooke appropriate credit for Hooke's early insight, and it is not clear whether this was owing to Hooke's annoying carping or Newton's own very unpleasant temperament.

Hooke's early musings on the layers of fossils found on his native Isle of Wight demonstrate a remarkable analytical and creative mind at work. He got the process of their formation pretty close to right lifetimes before the meaning of fossils was widely recognized in science.

Ms. Jardine made the happy discovery of what is likely Hooke's portrait (no known one survives), a picture that had long been identified as being of John Ray. The circumstances of her discovery make a wonderful little tale early in the book.

What comes through so strongly from some of Jardine's anecdotes is how the basic philosophy of science had advanced by the second half of the 17th century, Hooke's time. This was, after all, only a few decades after Francis Bacon, yet the main points of modern science seem to be assumed by Europe's leading tinkerers and scientists.

Hooke's story is not a happy one, but I will leave that for readers to discover. Ms. Jardine is at times a slightly awkward writer, but she has an interesting story to tell and, on the whole, she tells it well. Ms. Jardine also wrote On a Grander Scale, a biography of the wonderful Christopher Wren. The book on Hooke she regards as a companion volume to the one on Wren. Do read both.

BOOK REVIEW: RICHARD RUSSO'S NOBODY'S FOOL

REVIEW OF RICHARD RUSSO'S NOBODY'S FOOL BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, May 13, 2005


This a wonderful book. It will have you smiling, laughing, and concerned with the lives and events of a place that might otherwise be seen as of little worth.

Anyone who has driven through the secondary roads of Northern New York will recognize the book's breathtaking authenticity. This is the land of rusting cars sitting on blocks in front yards, old farm houses slumped over and left unpainted for decades, and ugly roadside beer joints with neon window signs.

The town at the center of the story is a place, once somewhat grand, now for years in serious decline. Charm can be spotted in the decayed gingerbread woodwork of century-old houses whose residents are too poor or old to keep them up. Some huge old trees give parts of the main street a disguise of faded elegance.

The town might be taken as a metaphor for the main character, Sully, who is slowly rotting into the same fabric of decay. Sully is charming, offensive, funny, and pathetic in turns. He is both biting observer of the town's slide into oblivion and full participant.

Sully is a complex human being, and surely one of the most memorable characters in modern American literature. He is actually one of a number of attempts by Richard Russo to come to terms with the man who was his extraordinary father. Most of these attempts have not been as appealing or successful as Nobody's Fool, the only exception being The Risk Pool, another fine book, where his central character is a boy thrown by circumstances into the bizarre, chaotic life of his father, a much rawer character than Sully.

Russo has the gift to hold a place up to laughter while yet never separating himself from what he is having us laugh at. It is that quality that gives grace to a story that could fall into brutal sarcasm.

The film that was made of this book was the kind of fine little film Hollywood just does not make anymore. It was a terrific role for an older Paul Newman, and, if you saw it, I think you will find yourself hearing his voice and intonations sometimes as you read Sully's lines.

But the book is far richer and more interesting than the film. It is quite simply a modern masterpiece.

BOOK REVIEW: RICHARD MANGO'S ATATURK

REVIEW OF RICHARD MANGO'S ATATURK BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, May 13, 2005


This is a disappointing book. The main points of Atatürk's career - hero of his country's war for independence and founder of the modern secular state of Turkey, a man with some remarkably modern views for his place and time - make him one of more attractive hero-figures of the twentieth century.

But somehow Mango does not succeed in giving us the living, breathing man. Indeed, Mango manages to make some of the genuinely exciting events of Atatürk's career read like rather dull broadsheet accounts.

Mango is certainly a scholar. That comes right through, but there is a somewhat lifeless quality that characterizes much of what should be a smashing yarn of great wars, declining empire, and dashing figures. The great number of Turkish place names and people do not make reading any easier, although Mango does offer a guide to pronunciation at the front.

Interestingly, this appraisal is quite at odds with cover quotes from reviews. One gets expert reviewers' ambiguities like "Takes its place at the top," or "...a higher level of biography than any previous account." Book reviewing in major publications has always been something of game, full of backscratching, favors, and artful ambiguities. The gap here between reviewers' words and Mango's actual work is rather notable.

Still this is a biography of an important figure, one about whom there is limited material in English. It is definitely worth reading.

BOOK REVIEW: D.J. TAYLOR'S INSIDE GEORGE ORWELL

REVIEW OF GORDON BOWKER'S INSIDE GEORGE ORWELL BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, June 22, 2005


This book is the best of the newer Orwell biographies, but it still falls short in some respects. Bowker does a far better job than D. J. Taylor at creating a sense of continuity and purpose in Orwell's life. Bowker is a good writer, occasionally showing bits of inspired analysis, but still there are passages of utility-grade stuff.

The two biographies, Bowker and Taylor, published in the same year, offer readers an opportunity to compare two quite different treatments of the same life, treatments that both use previously unknown materials. Taylor's treatment is more episodic and seems to lose no opportunity to highlight something dark, unflattering, or unpleasant about Orwell.

Bowker gets at Orwell's quintessential Englishness. I was happy he used exactly that word, Englishness, which I think is an important and appealing aspect of Orwell. It is a word I've always associated with Orwell much as I do with figures such as Dickens or Graham Greene. This is a quality virtually ignored by Taylor, unless you accept his references to old-boy school snobbery as a rough substitute, references I believe are clear distortions.

Bowker is sympathetic to his subject without ever being servile or sentimental, a position which is right for a biographer. While Taylor makes some effort to convince us of his old admiration for his subject, his words ring false. Taylor displays strong antipathy towards his subject, releasing it slowly through the book, and to my mind this is never the correct position for a biographer. Moreover, the clash between Taylor's claims of admiration and his clear antipathy introduces a howling note of falseness that warns of the author's intent.

Bowker does an excellent job of summarizing the saga of Orwell's widow (his second wife) Sonia and his literary legacy - a tale in which the new Cold War becomes an important element - an interesting topic with which Taylor doesn't do much. Bowker also does a nice job of explaining why a biographer would write about Orwell despite the author's well-known wish that he wanted no biography.

The portion of new material in either book dealing with Orwell's sex life does not shed a pleasant light on part of his character. I couldn't help thinking of passages in Benita Eisler's Byron dealing with the poet's grotesque servant-boy swapping and Mediterranean tours to buy boys in various countries - activities that would put him in prison today - passages that frankly left me feeling as though I needed fresh air. No, Orwell wasn't as twisted as Byron, but he was double-dealing in his sexual affairs and apparently sometimes found the charms of young girls selling themselves in exotic lands an irresistible purchase.

I very much agree with Arthur Koestler's observation, quoted in Bowker, "I don't think George ever knew what makes other people tick, because what made him tick was very different from what most other people tick." Orwell was in many ways what contemporary speech might describe as "out of it." He was, if you will, an authentic English eccentric. This may help explain why Orwell was such a powerful critic and observer while remaining a second-tier novelist.

In a way, something like this may be said of many incisive critics and great artists. The divine Mozart with his scatological letters and often buffoonish behavior. Beethoven's constant moving to new apartments, thunderous emotional storms, and self-destructive attachment to a worthless nephew. The ticks and quirks of the magnificent Samuel Johnson. Dicken's unbelievably obsessive, compulsive behavior.

At the more extreme end of the scale, we have Rousseau's bizarre temperament, always ready to attack friends and admirers. The strange Herman Melville who may just have murdered his wife. Marcel Proust's sadistic penchant for sticking pins into live mice.

Sometimes I think it is better just to enjoy the work of genius rather than digging too deeply into the lives of its creators. For this reason I am almost fearful of reading Norman Sherry's third volume on Graham Greene (reported to focus heavily on the unsavory aspects of Greene's life), one of my favorite twentieth-century writers and critics. But then again, we want to understand, and we find it almost irresistible to read about the lives of artists we have come to love. And whatever unpleasant we may learn, it remains the greatness of their work that drew us to them.

Orwell wrote some of the twentieth century's best essays and occasional pieces, and, in 1984, not long before his death, he displayed a kind of penetrating political insight rarely seen before or since. Since great writing is so often the work of mature people, we undoubtedly missed a great deal when he died at 46.

BOOK REVIEW: ALA BASHIR'S THE INSIDER

REVIEW OF ALA BASHIR'S THE INSIDER BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, October 31, 2005


This is an interesting book. Doctor Ala Bashir was as much an insider as it possible to be without being treated as a criminal by Bush's invasion forces. He served as a personal physician to Saddam Hussein for about twenty years. He is also an artist whose work Hussein favored.

This book is not a biography, and it is not a history in any proper sense. Rather, it is a series of anecdotes by an intelligent observer about life in Iraq under Hussein. Internal consistencies and other evidence suggest that this is an honest work, although we would like to read considerably more on some subjects.

In the dark world of dictatorship, to be favored by the leader often means to run into bitter dislike from other members of the regime, and this was certainly Bashir's experience. We are reminded by his anecdotes that dictators often are not aware of all that goes on within various fiefdoms, or if they are aware, they often feel unable to change things - a great irony, yet one confirmed by the lives of many from Hitler to the American Pharaoh, Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago.

Bashir confirms that a good deal of American propaganda gives an inaccurate picture of Hussein. Although Hussein could be ruthless and violent, he had a genuine concern with improving conditions of life for Iraqis, building many hospitals, schools, and cultural institutions. He actually advanced Iraqi women's rights significantly concerning important matters like a woman's right to initiate divorce.

Surprisingly, Hussein could even be a good listener, so long as the subject was not one on which he had made up his mind. Hussein was not a Stalin, and he had no admiration for Hitler. He enjoyed books, particularly history and biography. Bashir is pretty sure from personal experiences that Hussein is not an anti-Semite, but he would not even listen to anyone concerning a change in policy towards Israel.

Many of the problems in Hussein's regime were family problems. Hussein depended on clan and family strongly for loyalty, and he knew perfectly well that this often ended up with less competent people in senior positions. Bashir makes clear that Hussein's son, Uday, was mentally ill, and that on least one occasion Hussein was ready to punish him severely. Yet time usually softened Hussein's temper, and he expressed affection for a pretty-much worthless son.

While we all know that American policy favored Iraq over Iran, contributing to the terrible brutality of their 8-year war, Bashir suggests the CIA was there at the beginning, assisting the coup that led to Hussein's eventual assumption of power.

Those seeking to understand affairs in the Middle East will find this book refreshing, without propaganda or bombast. It is of limited scholarly use, but it is definitely worth reading, its main faults being a limited range of subjects and sketchy coverage.

BOOK REVIEW: KARIN FOSSUM'S HE WHO FEARS THE WOLF

REVIEW OF KARIN FOSSUM'S HE WHO FEARS THE WOLF BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, December 18, 2005


I am not a regular reader of mysteries, but my wife has encouraged me to read a number of interesting writers in this genre. One of my favorites is Norwegian writer, Karin Fossum.

He Who Fears the Wolf is a story with her appealing character, Chief Inspector Konrad Sejer, a quiet, thoughtful man with unusual powers of observation and a somewhat melancholy personal life that keeps him immersed in his work. The contrast with gun-waving, bellowing American detectives is notable and welcome. In this character, as in so many of Ms. Fossum's characters, there is a deep sense of humanity and decency.

In Wolf, Ms. Fossum creates another wonderful character, Erkki Johrma, an insane-asylum escapee. Ms. Fossum always displays an interest in the disturbed and rejected of society, but with Errki she has worked something of a miracle.

This story contains what must be one of the most memorable series of scenes in mystery books, to say nothing of literature. It involves the escape of a bank robber and a hostage, and there is a quality here that reminds me of Don Quixote - pathos, absurdity, and subtle humor combined with a very sympathetic view of the human condition. I cannot give any details without spoiling it for you.

Ms. Fossum is also a poet, and her descriptive powers are considerable, but she manages her descriptive passages with quick brushstrokes. She never creates a burden for those who like mystery books to move along briskly. Some might even regard her descriptions of bloody scenes as a bit overpowering.

Please don't think this is an "artsy" book despite its literary qualities, this is a genuine murder mystery, well-paced and gripping. It is a book you will not want to put down.

BOOK REVIEW: LEONIE FRIEDA'S CATHERINE DE MEDICI

REVIEW OF LEONIE FRIEDA'S CATHERINE DE MEDICI BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, February 3, 2006


This book is an interesting failure. It is well worth reading and contains many interesting passages, but Ms. Frieda fails in her stated aim of creating a more sympathetic understanding of Catherine de Medici and the difficulties under which she labored.

Catherine is widely seen as a talented, scheming and ruthless power-behind-the-throne figure, doing almost anything to promote and protect her children which included two Kings of France. Catherine's era overlaps that of a truly great queen, England's Elizabeth I, so her story includes figures such as Mary Queen of Scots and Philip II of Spain and includes the great waves of violence that crashed across Europe following the Reformation. You just can't come up with better historical material.

Ms. Frieda does a creditable job of telling her story, at times rising to gripping narrative as when she describes events around the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, an orgy of killing in which something on the order of ten to twenty thousand Huguenots were slaughtered, many having their throats cut in their beds.

Ms. Frieda's explanation of Catherine's role in the Massacre is that she only wanted to have a small group of leaders killed while conveniently gathered for the wedding of Henri of Navarre, a Protestant of Valois blood, and Catherine's daughter, Margot. Ms. Frieda's thesis is that what was to be a small "surgical operation" got completely out of hand with Paris mobs taking to killing anyone even suspected of being a Protestant, as though killing a group of guests at a royal wedding, had it gone no further, would have been just fine.

Ms. Frieda is not the first to put the thesis forward, but it fails utterly to soften our view of Catherine. There is little proof supporting Frieda's interpretation, but, in ordinary common law, if you commit a crime that generates a still bigger crime, you are not free of guilt. Beyond that, no one knew better than Catherine, after all her terrible experience with French Catholic-Protestant relations, what a seething place Catholic Paris was. To have Admiral Coligny, a much-admired Huguenot, and other high officials assassinated at that time in that place was criminally stupid, apart from all considerations of ethics and proper statecraft.

She wheedled her mentally-unbalanced son, Charles IX, into agreeing to the vicious plan, in part out of her sick jealousy over Coligny's friendship and influence with the King. When Charles, in one of his maniacal rages, finally roared his infamous "Kill them all" order, shouldn't the supposedly careful and subtle Catherine have understood how the words could be misinterpreted?

One can't avoid seeing Catherine as the classic over-protective, hot-house mother, willing to forgive her bloody awful darlings anything, willing to do almost anything for them. Such people always do a great deal of harm in ordinary life and even more when they are in high places. This sick trait of Catherine was compounded by the fact that there was raging madness in her Valois-de Medici brood. Charles IX, Henri III, and her daughter Margot, who married the future king, Henri of Navarre, were simply mad, unfit to rule even in ordinary times, but these were not ordinary times. There was Catherine working feverishly for their interests, effectively against the interests of France as a whole.

Other unsavory aspects of Catherine's character come through even in this book. Her horrible execution, many years later, of the Count de Montgomery, the man who accidentally killed her husband, Henri II, in a jousting entertainment, is just one. Henri, who had insisted on another joust, had publicly forgiven the man as he lay dying. Catherine waited for many years to take her bloody revenge. Frieda says this is one of the only examples of her taking vengeance, but that statement comes after having dismissed many convenient deaths, widely suspected at the time to have been poisonings.

Read this book and others - it contains an excellent bibliography - to decide for yourself how best to interpret Catherine's work. You will, in any event, be exposed to interesting times, and you will be glad you aren't living in them.

BOOK REVIEW: FRANCIS CARR'S MOZART AND CONSTANZE

REVIEW OF FRANCIS CARR'S MOZART & CONSTANZE BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, February 3, 2006


Here is biographical study blended smoothly with murder mystery. The cause of Mozart's death remains a mystery after many attempts to explain it. Despite the great success of Amadeus, the idea that the composer Salieri poisoned Mozart out of jealousy is generally not credited. Francis Carr skillfully reopens the question of poisoning, but with a new and plausible suspect, having set the stage with an analysis of Mozart's and Constanze's marriage.

It may seem hard for the general reader to believe that so little is known about parts of the life of so great a figure as Mozart. No matter which biography of Mozart you pick up, you find efforts to explain certain blanks in the life of a man so celebrated in his own time. So, too, the odd manner of his funeral and burial. Carr's thesis brings together and explains a number of these mysteries.

In the second half of the book, Carr does a superb job of documenting inconsistencies and reopening the question of why Mozart's remains were treated the way they were. In this matter he masterfully sweeps away the weak explanations of major biographers, especially those around the burial laws of Emperor Joseph II.

The book has a good many passages quoted from Mozart letters, a practice that I generally find less than happy, being so often used as padding. But here the letters are skillfully used to establish Mozart's feelings and attitudes towards his wife as well as providing key testimony from figures such as Constanze's sister Sophie. The absence of letters at certain times, presumably destroyed by Constanze, is itself a line of evidence. Because the heart of the book - Mozart's relationship with his wife and what happened to cause Mozart's death and strange burial - can be little more than an extended essay, the author may be forgiven some padding.

The book is well enough done that you may find yourself reading it in one sitting, just as I did.

If you had previously rejected the idea that Constanze was an inappropriate wife for Mozart, believing it based in prejudice and being aware, through letters, of Mozart's great affection for her, this book may just change your mind.

BOOK REVIEW: PETER GWYN'S THE KING'S CARDINAL

PETER GWYN'S THE KING'S CARDINAL REVIEWED BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, March 15, 2006


Here is investigative historical scholarship of the highest order, ranking with J.J. Scarisbrick's remarkable Henry VIII. Written in good, clear prose, every chapter of The King's Cardinal is packed with subtle observations and deductions from existing documents.

Wolsey is an interesting figure for many reasons. He was butcher's son who rose to the highest offices of church and state, the kind of career we usually associate with the modern era rather than with a time when feudal titles tended to be requirements for all important posts in government. Wolsey's capacity for work was breathtaking and his talents were considerable. Most interestingly, here was a man who understood the demands of realpolitik as well as Machiavelli yet maintained a genuine concern for humanism, enlightenment, justice and fair dealings in society.

There is surprisingly little reliable evidence for details of Wolsey's life, yet a substantial body of his correspondence and observations of others during his years in power survives. Thus, this book is less a biography of the controversial Cardinal than an analysis of important acts and policies while he was in power.

Gwyn strips away, carefully, layer by layer, many myths and misunderstandings that have accumulated over five centuries and managed to cloud understanding of Wolsey. Most importantly, he makes it clear that Henry ruled and Wolsey served, sweeping away the image of the younger Henry as playboy king who handed over most serious business to his Cardinal/Chancellor.

Gwyn makes it clear that it was Henry's bull-headed demands for progress on the divorce, "the king's Great Matter," coming at a time when Wolsey had many other important issues with which to deal, that were the cause of his downfall.

I love Wolsey's words in a final interview with Sir William Kingston, keeper of the Tower: "Therefore, Master Kingston, if it chance hereafter you to be one of his [Henry's] privy council...I warn you to be well advised and assured what matter ye put into his head; for ye shall never pull it out again."

Here is a book for all lovers of scholarly history and biography, for all serious students of English history, for students of foreign policy and statesmanship, and for all those who want to understand how a first-rate scholar goes about his business.

BOOK REVIEW: ROLAND JACQUARD'S IN THE NAME OF OSAMA

ROLAND JACQUARD'S IN THE NAME OF OSAMA REVIEWED BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, March 17, 2006


This book is a poor effort. It reminds me of one of those quickie books about the Mafia from the 1960s that were indigestible piles of newspaper cuttings and police tips. Such books spilled over with supposed mobster names and sinister-sounding activities, all with no perceivable organizing principle or meaningful analysis.

Just so Jacquard's book. After you've read it, you will understand almost nothing more about bin Laden than you knew before you read it. Jacquard has the name of every insignificant Arab-sounding individual ever given a parking ticket somewhere in the Western world, often going off on a pointless tangents from his attempt at a narrative on bin Laden. Unfortunately, the dozens of undefined organizations Jacquard mentions sound a lot like the Devil's Circle in that silly 1930s cliffhanger serial, The Three Musketeers.

The one interesting thing about this book is that it confirms a theory of mine concerning so-called experts on terror. In the United States especially, there are scores of such fellows regularly appearing on television news or writing other quickie books. No one ever seems to question how they are qualified to be considered experts in terror. After all, terrorist organizations are very secretive. How much did we ever learn about the IRA, a truly professional terrorist organization if there ever was one?

Much of what is claimed to be known today about al Qaeda, for example, is the result of American torture in a chain of post-invasion gulags. Like a child's cry of "uncle!" hoping to be released from a bully's grip, the words of the tortured are of little worth.

I am still trying to find a worthwhile book about bin Laden, but in the meantime, Jacquard's book is recommended only to be avoided.

BOOK REVIEW: LAMAR WALDRON'S ULTIMATE SACRIFICE

LAMAR WALDRON'S ULTIMATE SACRIFICE REVIEWED BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, October 17, 2006


This is a disappointing book. I had looked forward to what promised from some comments and reviews to be the first important book on the Kennedy assassination since Anthony Summers' Not In Our Time.

I am, readers will note, discounting numerous books since that publication which re-state old evidence, trying to give it some new twist, and conclude Oswald was the lone assassin.

The main merit of this book is that it does not accept the official story of the assassination. However, it attempts to prove a specific alternate theory, and it fails to do so. Along the way, it is pretty dull.

The first fault of this book is that it is poorly written - dull, heavy, and repetitive. The poor writing to which I refer is not just a matter of style. It includes, for example, many examples of saying, after suggesting some line of thought, that the authors will get to that in a later chapter. This is prima facie evidence of poor organization.

The poor writing includes such annoying faults as introducing facts or quotes with phrases like "as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist said...." Haynes Johnson is introduced three or four times this way. Alert readers will recognize a technique to bolster a claim beyond its merit. In general, one expects such quoted information to stand on its own, not on the citation of a newspaper-marketing award.

The book descends into a almost silly hush-hush tone with a number of footnotes or parenthetical statements about how the authors are protecting the identities of certain people. After making such claims, the authors sometimes proceed to suggest who in fact is involved, the worst example of this being the suggestion that Che Guevara was the CIA's man in Cuba ready to kill Castro.

Another fault of the book is a truly enormous amount of quoted material. This is a lazy-minded practice, a substitute for good analysis. It is also simply padding used to create the kind of fat book many expect on a serious topic like this.

The book brings little that is genuinely new forward. Almost every idea in it has been suggested previously by others, including a number of books on the Mafia as assassins.

The idea that there was a secret C-Day plan (the authors' nickname for a coup and friendly invasion of Cuba being run in top secret by Robert Kennedy) only puts into new words what has been general understanding for years. President Kennedy was a jingo, as was his brother. He embraced the idea of American interference in the affairs of others. He was also part of a family that never accepted defeat with good grace. Neither of the Kennedy brothers would accept the embarrassing defeat of the Bay of Pigs nor the partial-defeat of the resolution to the Cuban missile crisis.

But the book's greatest fault is not proving its thesis. This book has a superficially plausible thesis, that the Mafia infiltrated secret Kennedy plans against Cuba and used the existence of these plans as cover for the assassination, knowing the government would be too embarrassed to reveal the truth afterward.

If indeed the Mafia were behind the Kennedy assassination, then it is doubtful there can be convincing direct evidence left, and indeed the authors fail to produce any. They assemble a complicated story from snippets of still partially-censored government documents and casual remarks. And as all people who have studied the assassination know, the most interesting government documents have never been released or do not exist.

Of course, the Mob doesn't leave filing cabinets full of paper documenting its crimes the way the Nazis did. The best we have had is whispered word that so-in-so said they killed Kennedy.

When you give the authors' thesis a second thought, you realize it is faulty from the start. Why would the government be intimidated about the revelation of its plot in the context of the early 1960s when almost anything anti-Castro was acceptable? Why would the government not go ahead with C-day after the assassination, just using the assassination as cover?

More generally, the CIA's dirty-operations people, armed camps of violent anti-Castro refugees, professional criminals, and other nasty hangers-on were all so tightly bound together in the costly, anti-Castro plots of the early 1960s, it seems inadequate to think of one of the elements, and the smallest element, as separate and influencing exclusively the course of events. Many anti-Castro Cubans themselves hated Kennedy, viewing him as weak in their cause. They didn't need the Mafia, having been generously financed and armed to the teeth by the CIA.

Al Qaeda's future training camps in the mountains of Afghanistan were small, under-financed efforts compared to these American operations involving thousands of people and tens of millions of dollars. It was a giant criminal, terrorist plot financed by government. It failed in its purpose, Castro outlasting two generations of American Presidents, but it managed to kill many people, waste huge amounts of money, and do a great deal of damage.

BOOK REVIEW: WILLIAM TAUBMAN'S KHRUSCHEV

BOOK REVIEW OF WILLIAM TAUBMAN'S KHRUSCHEV BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, February 26, 2007


It's about time we had a decent biography of Nikita Khruschev.

Khruschev is a more important historical figure than seems generally appreciated today. He was something of a refreshing presence on the dreary world scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s. I remember his American tour, and you couldn't help but find a kind of pleasant and infectious quality in some of his observations and activities. I believe he sincerely wanted to slow or halt the Cold War the same way he diminished the horrors of Stalinism, an historic achievement.

Taubman doesn't capture the more idealistic sense of Khruschev, which I believe was genuine, because I was a young man through his time and took an interest in events.

Taubman's Khruschev is a bright (Khruschev had considerable analytical ability and a remarkable memory) peasant risen to the top, an extremely crude man, always regretful about his lack of formal education, who never ceases to behave as something of a Father Karamazov. I have no doubt there is truth here, but it provides an incomplete picture.

Was Khruschev any cruder than what we now know of the private life of John Kennedy, who had prostitutes swimming in the White House pool while Jackie was away, or of the public Lyndon Johnson, who used to conduct interviews and bark orders while relieving himself? I ask this because Taubman repeats the word crude or offers anecdotes about crude behavior many, many times.

Even as a young man I thought many of Khruschev's crudities were not so great as they were treated by America's press. The banging of his shoe at the U.N. is a favorite example. Crude? Yes. But significant beyond style? I think not much.

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in biography, the period, world affairs, or Soviet history, but I do have reservations about it, and it should be read with some caution.

Taubman weaves into the text too great a sense of the correctness of America's position and policies of the time, giving a sense of Khruschev largely representing an irritating and sometimes dangerous opponent to them. America often behaved in provocative and dangerous ways through the Cold War. Taubman mentions some matters, as Eisenhower's saying that if the Soviets over-flew the United States the way the United States regularly invaded Soviet airspace there would be war, but the week-to-week reality of this is not stressed enough here to appreciate the intensity of the Soviet point of view. There were many such matters, including American submarines actually colliding with Soviet boats.

Taubman gives a lot of attention to Khruschev's well-known habit of rattling his rockets in speeches, but we are not given enough background for why he might do this. The Pentagon actually had plans in the mid-1950s for an atomic pre-emptive attack on the Soviets. Generals like Curtis LeMay, the man who bombed Japan to the point of gratuitous horror, openly advocated nuclear hostilities. And, of course, America had used the atomic bomb, twice.

Taubman's treatment of matters like the Cuban Missile Crisis suffers from this. The U.S. had a huge, generously-finaced terrorist operation going against Cuba at the time, including along more than one track, and that is an important part of the background that Taubman treats with what I believe is neglect. Taubman's words on the ghastly Bay of Pigs does reveal hints of American jingo attitudes. They are not offered loudly, but they are there, and I think they should not be if we want to understand what motivated Khruschev.

One of the great missing chapters in the book is any detail around the Kennedy assassination. The assassination is there but not treated adequately. It was, after all, an epic event which had great consequences on both the Soviets and America. Of course, to treat the assassination adequately involves going into issues that remain murky and controversial.

Despite my reservations, the book is an interesting and worthwhile read, however, I certainly do not agree with the New York Times review which said "Succeeds in every sense...unlikely to be surpassed any time soon...."

BOOK REVIEW: ROBERT FISK'S THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILIZATION

BOOK REVIEW OF ROBERT FISK'S THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, July 16, 2007


Everyone concerned with contemporary world affairs should read this book. Fisk aims to capture the sweep of events in Western Asia over decades, and he largely succeeds.

It is not a great sweep-of-history book in the sense of Gibbon or Macaulay - Fisk is a journalist, not an historian - although it has great journalistic passages.

Fisk provides an indispensable antidote to much of the propaganda and disingenuousness that plagues mainline media on the subjects of the Middle East and terror, much the way the Internet is plagued with innumerable viruses and Trojan horses.

Robert Fisk is one of the world's great war correspondents, and if you haven't read him at his passionate best, read the sections of this book about the Soviet Union in Afghanistan or the first Gulf War. He has lived in the Middle East for decades, and he has hurled himself into the conflicts there time and again.

To some, particularly defenders of Israel's excesses, Fisk is a controversial figure. But there is relatively little legitimate controversy possible in Fisk's reporting. He writes what he has witnessed, and he has spent many years putting himself at risk to be a witness.

The faults of the book are few.

At over twelve hundred pages, it may prove off-putting for new readers, but if this is a fault from one perspective, it is a strength from another. The book stands as an invaluable, comprehensive reference for events in the Middle East over recent decades. Forgotten a name involved in a famous event or a date? You are almost sure to find it here.

One of Fisk's stylistic manners is to get the name of obscure witnesses, as an individual soldier, or details such as the serial number off the scrap of a shell used in a battle or incursion, verifying where it came from. These are the practices of a seasoned, professional journalist and often provide Fisk with leads to still other stories.

For new readers, it should be emphasized that Fisk generally is a clear writer, so the length of the book should not discourage you.

The other fault is its episodic nature, although again this is a fault only from some perspectives.

The episodic nature undoubtedly derives from Fisk work as a columnist, and I think it likely a good part of the book is taken from re-worked columns or old notebooks. It is important to stress that the book is not a collection of old columns, a common kind of book from so many columnists.

Fisk enjoys reading himself, and the sense of an omnivorous reader of newspapers and history books pervades his work.

BOOK REVIEW: COMMENTS ON VINCENT BUGLIOSI'S RECLAIMING HISTORY

COMMENTS ON VINCENT BUGLIOSI'S RECLAIMING HISTORY BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, August 7, 2007


People impressed by big fat books will be impressed by this one, but in a sense its very size is a judgment against it.

It is no great feat for experienced court prosecutors to churn out voluminous documents. They do it all the time in their court briefs, taking pages of legalese to say what should take paragraphs of good, clear English.

It is fitting in more than one way that Bugliosi is a prosecutor, for this book is a prosecutor's brief, just a fatter one than the ones produced by Bugliosi's predecessors like Gerald Posner or Edward Epstein.

But size here serves another purpose. What I would call intimidation. How could you possibly argue with this massive pile (1,600 pages) of evidence and argument?

The truth is that it is not hard at all to argue with it.

Bugliosi follows his predecessors who used pretty much the same evidence to reach the same conclusions which any independent-minded student of the assassination understands is impossible, that is, that Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone.

Bugliosi had no new evidence of any significance with which to work. He simply looks at the same old stuff ad nauseam. Those familiar with the evidence know the truth is that until we have new evidence, Bugliosi's conclusion cannot possibly be reached by a conscientious investigator.

The key fact of the assassination is that the existing evidence is not adequate to convict anyone, and certainly not Oswald. There is of course other evidence in existence which has never been released. The CIA and the FBI have files they have never released.

We know this from many bits of evidence, including references in documents we do have and from situations about which we can positively conclude evidence must exist by the nature of things. A good example of the last is the CIA surveillance photos and recordings of Oswald, or someone pretending to be Oswald, in Mexico City. An obviously incorrect photo was released and the claim was made recordings were erased.

Oswald's connections with the FBI have never been satisfactorily examined. There are many circumstances suggesting his being a paid informant for the FBI, especially during his time in New Orleans. A letter Oswald wrote to a Dallas agent just before the assassination was deliberately and recklessly destroyed by order of the office's senior agent immediately after the assassination with no reasonable explanation.

Oswald had no motive for killing Kennedy, having expressed admiration for the President. Bugliosi cannot get around this fact, only pursuing the typical path of all his forerunners of attacking Oswald's character.

Oswald's being promptly assassinated himself by Jack Ruby, a man associated with the murky world of anti-Castro violence, someone whose past included gun-running to Cuba and enforcer-violence in Chicago, is a gigantic fact that sticks in the throat of any author like Bugliosi. It has never been explained and is not here.


Of course, there is always Bertrand Russell's unanswered questions after he had reviewed an advanced copy of the Warren Report: "If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?"

Russell's question goes to the heart of the matter, as you would expect from one of the greatest mathematical minds of the 20th century. It has never been answered, and certainly not by Bugliosi.

It must be embarrassing for Bugliosi that Italian authorities recently, near the release of his book, conducted a series of tests with Oswald's ridiculous choice of weapons, a 1940 Mannlicher-Carcano, one of the last rifles in the world a determined assassin would choose.

Army sharpshooters could not come close to Oswald's supposed feat of loading the crude bolt-action rifle and firing it three times.

Moreover, in their tests using animal parts, it was shown impossible for a bullet to emerge from Kennedy virtually intact as the Warren Commission said "the magic bullet" did.

Of course, when we limit ourselves to three times loading and shooting for the rifle, we are already playing the Warren Commission's game. There were in fact at least four shots as a closely-analyzed recording clearly showed.

Recent analysis at Texas A&M University also showed that the ballistics evidence used to rule out a second gunman had been misinterpreted.

BOOK REVIEW: MARK ANDERSON'S SHAKESPEARE BY ANOTHER NAME

REVIEW OF MARK ANDERSON'S SHAKESPEARE BY ANOTHER NAME BY JOHN CHUCKMAN, August 23, 2007


This is a biography of Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, but the focus of this book is not so much to document the Earl's life as to demonstrate that the Earl was the author of the plays and poems we ascribe to William Shakespeare.

The known facts of Shakespeare's own life are few and seemingly unpromising to have produced the language's greatest poet. Many scholars and critics over the centuries have speculated that others were responsible for the plays and poems.

In de Vere, Anderson does have a fairly strong candidate. The author does show many connections between events in the life of Edward de Vere and facts and references in Shakespeare's work.

I think Anderson's strongest argument is the idea that a man like the real William Shakespeare, actor and theater producer, a man without any access to high levels of government, a man who so far as we know never traveled to any extent, and a man who would not have had access to any great library, simply would not be familiar with all the sophisticated matters touched on in the plays.

To bolster this general argument, Anderson identifies many circumstances from the plays that may be explained in terms of de Vere's experience, but they all remain suggestive, and in many cases Anderson does go through a rather tortured effort to make what he regards as a strong point.

Anderson offers many other supporting suggestive bits such as anagrams and drawings seeming to reveal another as the actual playwright and passages annotated by de Vere in contemporary books. The whole of this is suggestive, at times powerfully so, but it is somewhat less than convincing.

Although I enjoyed this book, nevertheless, in the end, I remain unconvinced. As Anderson says himself, there is no "smoking gun" - and, God, how I wish a scholar writing about our greatest writer would avoid such clichéd American expressions.

The most important doubt for me is found in de Vere's own known writing. While his letters show a man of learning and eloquence, I just do not hear Shakespeare in his words. There are times when Anderson says a reference in a letter is the same matter as a reference in a play or poem, but the magic of the language just isn't there to my mind.

Several interesting thoughts come to mind with the de Vere thesis. First, de Vere - wastrel and swashbuckler, was not a particularly pleasant or even ethical man, quite different to the figure most of us imagine Shakespeare's being.

Second, de Vere was not just a failure as a businessman, he was a total failure at being even the keeper of his inheritance. He had no commercial sense at all.

In the American national battery of tests for teachers some years ago, I noticed an odd question about Shakespeare in which the "correct" answer was about his being a good businessman - running a successful theater company, etc - rather than the romantic ideal of the artist. I thought the question heavily biased by America's focus on making money. If de Vere was Shakespeare, the question is not only odd, the desired answer was altogether wrong.

Despite my reservations, this is a book that should be read by all admirers of Shakespeare and by all who are fascinated by the Elizabethan period.

CHICAGO TRIBUNE NEWSPAPER IN MEMORIUM FOR ROBERT SORENSEN AN OLD GOOD FRIEND

Robert Peter Sorensen, born Chicago Sept. 11, 1909, to Oscar Sorensen and Catherine Keeley; died March 14, 1990; buried March 16, 1990, Park Lawn Cemetery, Toronto, Canada.

Known to friends as Rip. He was part of a generation that dearly loved the city and the kind of man no one ever regretted calling a friend.

Now, he's back with Barney and the boys from the Ravenswood Line.

"It's nice, but it's not Chicago."

SHORT STORY: PUPPY LOVE

SHORT STORY: PUPPY LOVE

They pressed their faces tight against the window with their hands shading the sides of their eyes. It was a big window with the reflections of all the stores across 75th Street and the sun shimmering off the glass.

Jack and Willy had seen her going into Ray's Pizzeria from about a block away. There was no mistaking her even from that distance.

They couldn't see much without smooching up the glass. It probably made them look a little goofy inside. But that didn't matter. She was in there. And they wanted a good look.

"Gee, there she is."

"Yeah, but she's sittin' with some guy."

The object of their efforts was a girl named Marie.

Neither one of them ever said a word to her. They probably never would. Jack and Willy were twelve, almost thirteen, and she was fourteen. That alone made her practically unapproachable.

Besides she was kind of hoody. The kind of girl that went out with guys that smoked, guys with initials carved into heavy black belts. That made her a little scary. And indescribably exciting.

She was a sultry goddess. They got glimpses of her at school last semester. They'd both crane their necks if she passed in the hall and then turn away, nervously laughing and snorting, afraid those dark eyes might just look right into theirs.

They'd talk about seeing her at recess. About her black hair done in a French twist. The bangs over her big, velvety eyes. Round cheeks with powder and pink stuff on them. Big red lips. And the straight skirts she wore.

Now they wouldn't see her anymore. She was in high school.

"Man, oh, man, is she beautiful," Willy said, pulling his face from the window.

"Yeah, there ain't another girl that comes close."

"Yeah, an' you should see her legs."

Willy was referring to the claim he'd seen her once in her gymsuit playing dodgeball. The sight was unforgettable, because he described it in detail every time her name was mentioned.

"Ya wanna hang aroun' an' see when she leaves?"

"Yeah, sure."

Just then this tough-looking guy rushed out the door. He was looking straight at them. It took a second for them to realize what was happening, but it was the guy who was sitting with her. And he didn't look happy.

"Hey, ya little jerks, whatcha think you're doin' there?"

He charged right up to Jack. It was the way hoody guys do things, without giving you a chance to think about what was going on. He was still talking when he shoved Jack so hard, he almost fell backwards on the sidewalk. He only caught his balance with a lot of panicky arm-waving.

Jack and Willy didn't need to say a word to each other. They both knew instinctively what to do. They turned and ran as fast as they could.

That surprised him a little. So they got a head start. But as they rounded the corner to Coles Avenue, Jack could see the guy take off after them. He was yelling something at them.

They turned off Coles into the alley behind the stores. Then into a gangway behind some apartments. They hit one set of back-porch stairs flying, racing up the wooden stairs, two or three at a time, until they got to the third floor. Then they collapsed on the porch, breathing hard, hearts pounding.

At first, all Jack could think about was how stupid he looked, getting shoved around like that and running away like a rabbit. In front of her. But the thought of how much stupider he'd look on the sidewalk with a bloody nose made him feel better.

They raised their heads just enough to look down between the edge of the porch and the bottom of the banister. They had a clear view down into the alley from up there. But almost right away they ducked back down against the rough, gray boards. He was there, looking around for them.

"We better jus' stay here a while. Maybe he won't go lookin' up here," Jack breathed the words, trying to whisper and pant at the same time.

"Yeah, even if he thinks of the porches, he don't know what one we're on. For all he knows, we live aroun' here, an' we're already home.

"But what if he comes up?"

"We'll jus' both kick at him comin' up the stairs. He won't be able to get up here with both of us kickin' at his face."

That thought was reassuring. They were really scared, but they weren't helpless. There was something they could do. They were actually pretty safe up there. They used to hide like this, playing cowboys and Indians, on back porches all over the neighborhood. All that practice was coming in handy now.

"What if he's got a switchblade?"

Jack hadn't thought of that. He sure looked like he could have one. Greased-back hair and a sneery look on his face. Just wearing a tight undershirt. And the thick black belt and engineering boots every hoody guy strutted around in.

"I don't know." Jack looked around a little, scraping his cheek on the wood. Just like on all the back porches of all the old apartment buildings, there was a big garbage can standing in one corner, the kind made out of gray, ribbed steel with handles on the sides.

"We'll throw the garbage can on him. An' there's a couple of pop bottles over by the door. We could throw those, too."

"Yeah, good idea." Willy whispered. "If we hear him on the steps, we better get the garbage can ready to throw 'fore he gets up."

"Yeah, he sees us up here with that, there's no way he's comin' up."

They stayed there, still, except for their breathing, listening for any sounds on the stairs. After fifteen minutes or so and several nervous peeks under the banister, they figured it was safe.

They crept down slowly, crouching as they went, hoping to see a little farther ahead to the next landing, grabbing both banisters tightly with each step. Just like in cowboys and Indians, he could be there, waiting for you to come down the stairs.

Their sneakers didn't make a sound. But here and there an old board creaked.

"If ya see him, jus' run back up an' get ready to kick him. Aim for his face," Jack whispered.

But he was gone. By the time they got back out into the alley, they were feeling pretty good.

"Which way ya wanna go?"

"Let's go the same way we were."

They left the alley and turned back up toward 75th Street. When they got near the corner, just as a precaution, they flattened themselves against the wall of the building. Willy peeked around the corner.

"Not a sign. Let's go."

They raced away from the pizzeria. But pretty soon they slowed down and stopped looking over their shoulders. They got back to the way they usually walked. Arms and legs swinging carefree. Pants cuffs and laces flapping around. Sneakers scraping the sidewalk when they pushed each other or stopped to look in some of the stores. Laughing at just about anything.

As they came up to Exchange Avenue, several girls came out of the Coronet Restaurant on the corner ahead. They started across the street toward them.

You could tell from out in the street they were older. Some of them had makeup and straight skirts. High-school girls. Probably fourteen or fifteen. They were laughing and talking, turning their heads back and forth with their hair swinging around, as they walked all bunched together almost like a group picture for a yearbook.

Jack and Willy elbowed each other and laughed when they first saw them. As they got closer, the boys straightened up and the laughs changed to little whispered comments through lips that hardly moved. When the girls got really close, Jack and Willy were quiet. Just plain stiff and nervous actually.

As they passed, one girl's voice and then another said "Hello, boys." Kind of slow and silly. Then there was a chorus of giggles and laughs.

Jack and Willy didn't say a thing. They just looked straight ahead and walked like they were afraid of tripping on their shoelaces. But when the girls were a safe distance away, they suddenly stopped and turned around.

"Man, did ya hear that? Did ya hear that?" Jack bent over like the wind was knocked out of him. "They were talkin' to us!"

Willy shouted, "Ya, man, an' that blond with the ponytail, what a dream! I couldn't believe she was real."

"Aw, did ya see the one with red hair? Man, was she sharp-lookin'!"

"Sharper than Marie?"

"Ya know, when ya think about it, Marie really ain't all that great. I mean, she's pretty nice, but she don't compare to what we jus' saw."

Jack and Willy watched the girls till the last of their bouncing hair and swaying skirts disappeared around the corner where 75th Street turned a little. Then they started walking again, weaving back and forth along the sidewalk, laughing and snorting, pushing and elbowing. Willy was telling Jack about what kind of legs the blond girl probably had.

SHORT STORY: SAND DOLLARS

SHORT STORY: SAND DOLLARS


Almost as soon as the knob clicked, the few birds twittering in the thorny excuse for a tree outside were silenced. They were drowned out or scared away by a booming voice yelling names through a screaming, bawling crowd.

The volume was high enough to make you think the game show was in the trailer. But it didn't bother Burt. He was sitting on the couch, near a little window where the sun seemed bright even with the shade down, not much more than six feet from the source of the noise, reading his paper. He held the paper up near his face. He wasn't trying to block the television. His glasses just weren't much good.

Fran, after turning on the television, walked a little groggily around the short counter to the tiny kitchen in her faded quilt robe and curlers. She filled a pan with water and put it on the nearest gas burner. She was careful to use the bottled water. They said there was just too much lime in the well water.

She turned and got two cups and a jar of instant coffee out of the cupboard over the counter. She knocked some powder into each cup. The water boiled quickly. Fran turned off the burner and filled the cups. The pan held just enough. She carried the cups back around the counter into the living room.

"Here, Hon."

Burt put the paper down just long enough to take the coffee. He put it on a tiny, rickety table next to him and started reading again. You could see his lips moving while he read.

Fran sat at the other end of the couch, sipping the hot coffee, her eyes fixed to the television over the cup, already a serious member of the audience.

Burt cleared his throat a little from behind the paper as a kind of announcement, "Ya know, Hon, it says here some guy won that big prize las' night. Says the ticket was sold in Phoenix."

Fran answered without moving her eyes from the television. "I guess that means we didn't win it ag'in. Did ya check your numbers for anything else?"

"Oh, yeah, we didn't get a damn thing. Bet we get somethin' nex' time."

Burt put his paper down and took a gulp of coffee. He looked across the room through the screen door. There was a heavy, squat couple riding on something that looked like a cross between a motorcycle and golfcart. They moved slowly. Although the little orange safety flag, stiff on a tall whip-like pole at the back of the cart, gave the momentary illusion of speed.

Their slow passage across the width of the screen door and the nearby window had all the appearance of purpose. Importance even.

It was the way they looked around with their meshy baseball caps and rainbow-mirrored sunglasses. Serious. Unsmiling. Alert. Almost like they were looking for something in the chaotic landscape of trailers, sheds and R.V.s.

The bright colors of their shorts and the way they bulged over the seats should have taken away from that impression. But they didn't. The shorts were washed and pressed. Like uniforms.

The driver's hat was fastidiously positioned over his glasses. Puffed neatly like a little mountain tent on the front two-thirds of his head. It made him look like a guy playing sheriff on television. A guy selling steering-wheel locks.

Burt knew they weren't looking for anybody. That was just the way they went around the trailer park every morning. Evenings, too, lots of times. They drove the same road, the same way, looking around the trailers, every morning. At the same speed, too. No one was supposed to go more than five miles an hour.

It wasn't a road really. Just part of the hard-packed, stony desert floor where there weren't any trailers or sheds. A stranger probably couldn't tell the dusty road from the dusty lots, even though they were marked out here and there by little rows of pebbles, the odd plastic bottle or a few cactuses. But any regular resident would soon set him straight.

"Them people do the same damn thing ev'ry damn day."

"What's that, Hon?"

"Jack an' Mabel there. Ev'ry damn day they go ridin' like that. They don't go anywhere. Jus' the same damn ride ev'ry day."

Fran looked up from the television. "Yeah, seems kinda silly, ridin' aroun' the same place over an' over like that. There's no place to go aroun' here."

"I'll bet that damn golfcart of theirs cost a pretty penny. An' that's all they ever do with it. Jus' keep ridin' roun' an' roun'. They look like two damn goofy kids."

Burt went back to his paper for a couple of minutes. Again, without moving it away from his face, "Hon, says here it's gonna hit the eighties today in Phoenix."

"Well, ya better get that damn swampcooler fixed up, or we're gonna be bakin' here pretty soon."

"Don't worry none, I already talked to Mike about it. He's comin' over."

Fran looked away from the television for a few seconds. She stared at Burt, watching his lips move over the paper.

"Mike? It'll be a hundred an' ten in the shade here by the time he shows up."

"Aw, Mike's okay, Hon. He said he'd drop over this week.

"Says here it's thirty-one back in Chicawgo."

Fran didn't answer. She was part of the audience again.

Burt put the paper down. The weather summary was always the last thing he read. It was on the back page. He picked up a little pile of mail he got at the box when he was walking Joe earlier. Bills mostly. Probably more than they could take care of right now. He left the bills unopened for Fran.

There were only two envelopes Burt cared about. He opened both of them right away. One was a big fat, important-looking thing, with both their names in a window, printed in fancy letters with a registration number like a stock certificate.

The bulky envelope with its fancy documents addressed to complete strangers might make someone else think about things like worthless old mining stocks. There were all those old, abandoned mines up in the hills. Places loaded with stories of greed and fraud. Places that were nothing now but windblown, blackened eyesores, preserved forever in the desert heat. Places for families in R.V.s to visit. Real history.

All that mattered to Burt was something printed there about how they might have won millions already. He got a little agitated thinking about that. His jaw was moving slightly like he was muttering to himself.

The other envelope was a letter from one of the casinos they visited a couple of times a year in Nevada. The place resembled a discount-warehouse version of the Old West. Red-flocked wallpaper by the acre. Truckloads of chipboard molded into gingerbread trim. Plastic Tiffany fixtures. Styrofoam strawhats. Cathedral-size paintings of mountains and sunsets.

But in Burt's eyes it all looked pretty glamorous. It probably would to anyone who compared it to dusty truckstops and swap-meet tents held together with duct tape. And that's exactly what made up the center of their little town.

Except for television, the casino was the only entertainment Burt and Fran had. It wasn't a big extravagance. They never spent more than a few hundred dollars. You didn't have to dress fancy. You could get a good meal out for a change. The drinks were free. And, what really mattered, you might just win big.

That's what kept all those old folks streaming into the place. Pickup trucks, campers, R.V.s, buses and motorhomes lumbered in and out of there, day and night. Dusty trails from every point on the desert. Modern wagon trains full of creased and jowly pioneers in stretchpants.

If you didn't know better, you'd think it was some kind of around-the-clock revival meeting. And in a way, that's just what it was. It gave a lot of people something to look forward to.

Burt could actually feel his mouth watering at the prospect of staying up most of the night with one of those big, chrome-plated machines, watching the numbers spin and the lights flash, waiting for the alarm to go off and tell everyone he was a winner.

"Look here, Honey..."

"Shush, they're goin' for the jackpot now!"

Burt watched the screen for the first time.

"Jeez, that's all right, they're goin' for a new car.

"Now see what I mean, Hon, why do they go an' have a Jap car for the prize?"

"Shush."

The audience screamed when the curtains revealed a car. And when the make was announced. And when a model dangled keys on her finger. And when she opened a door. And even when the kind of tires it came with were announced. You imagined small-town cheerleaders seeing civilization for the first time. Wide-eyed faces full energy and blemish-cream spots. But most of them looked like the stretchpants crowd at the casino.

The sighs, as the contestant walked off empty-handed, were just as loud.

"I knew he didn't pick that las' number right. I jus' knew it!"

Burt cleared his throat again. "Hon, the casino's got another one of them deals comin' up."

"I'm afraid we just ain't got the money for it now. I ain't even looked at them bills yet."

"This says we get a room for the weekend...."

"Yeah, but we ain't goin' there to stay in a room. An' they ain't sendin' that without expectin' ya to spend money."

"Oh, Hon, we can put off one of them bills a little bit. We ain't been there in months.

"Look here, the room's only twenty bucks a night." Burt said it like the price of the room meant they had already won something.

"Oh, I don't know."

"Hon, we could use the break. We oughtta drive on up there nex' weekend. We might jus' get lucky. Ya never know."

Fran didn't take a lot of convincing. Burt's enthusiasm was contagious. She got pretty tired of sitting around watching the trailer park bake in the sun. And she liked gambling. Not as much as Burt, but she liked it.

"Oh, I s'pose we could manage it."

Burt felt safe bringing up the other letter now.

"Hon, could ya fill this here thing out?"

"Is that them damn magazines ag'in?"

"Yeah, but ya don't have to take no magazines to win."

"Like heck ya don't. I don't know how many of them damn things I filled out. We ain't won a cent."

"It says right here somewhere...."

"Well, how come I'm the one always fillin' 'em out?"

"Hon, we could win millions. It only takes a couple a minutes."

"This is the las' time if we don't win somethin'. Say, could I see that paper now? I gotta clip my coupons."

Burt handed over the paper cheerfully. He was happy about the results for both envelopes.

Jack and Mabel and the little orange flag droned slowly by in the other direction.

"Hon, I'm goin' over to Hank's for a few minutes while ya do your coupons."

Fran didn't say anything. She knew he wouldn't be back for at least an hour. That meant she could watch her other favorite game show without any interruptions.

Hank's place was several minutes away at one end of the trailer park. Next to the cesspool. You couldn't actually see much of the cesspool because, inside the fence, it was surrounded with grapefruit trees and cactuses. But when the wind was right you could sure tell it was there.

Maybe that's why they let Hank do pretty much as he liked. No one else would rent that spot. His place looked like a small swap meet with poles and ropes supporting home-made tents in every direction from his trailer. Scattered under the tents were rough wooden tables covered with dust, rusty tools and unfinished projects. Woodworking. Stone polishing. Car parts. There were a couple of beat-up sheds that leaned over to one side, probably from the way all the junk was piled inside.

Near the fence by the cesspool was a small cactus garden and pieces of several different sets of lawn furniture. From here you could sit and watch Hank's fountain. It was his most ambitious project. All different kinds of rocks and crystals, hundreds of them, cut and polished, cemented to a big wooden box with water flowing down one end into a tiny tar-lined pool. There was a spotlight so you could see it at night.

Burt sat in one of the chairs and waited for Hank to show up. He had a little trouble getting in and out of lawn chairs anymore. It gave him a little twinge of guilt about what the doctors said last time in the hospital. But he wasn't about to give up baloney-and-butter sandwiches or fried eggs cooked in bacon grease. And he sure wasn't going to start eating rabbit food after all these years.

It was a pretty nice spot if you didn't count the cesspool. Kind of like the edge of an oasis. There was a little shade from the trees, and the sun made all the leaves shimmer. And Burt liked the fountain.

You couldn't be sure where Hank was at this time. And Burt didn't have the energy to go looking for him. He knew he'd show up suddenly, quietly, the way indians do in cowboy movies.

Hank usually got up around three in the morning and gulped down a pot of coffee to get started. He puttered around for hours under spotlights he had on some of the tent poles. He said it was because it was cool, but Burt figured he was restless and didn't sleep too well. And he was just a little crazy. Like all the people living out on the desert. Himself included.

This was just about time for Hank to sit down by the cactuses and have a couple of beers. He always drank beer in the morning. Burt knew it was a good time to visit.

Hank came in from the wash at the back. He must have been over helping with something. Hank was like that. All you had to do was ask.

He didn't say a word. Just went to the trailer and came out holding several open bottles, all cool and sweaty. He put them down on the table, handed one to Burt and started drinking another as soon as he sat down.

They'd sit like that, without saying anything, sometimes for quite a while. Burt liked talking, but he'd learned to pace himself a little over the years with Hank. Hank was from Canada, though he'd spent years working in the States. He just didn't talk the same way people did back around Chicago.

"Hank, ya read how somebody won that hundred million?"

"No, haven't looked at the paper yet. They know who won?"

"All they know is the ticket was sold in Phoenix. The guy ain't showed up yet. Boy, I wish a little of that'd come my way. I can sure think of a few things I'd do with it."

"Tell you the truth, Burt, I don't know what I'd do with it anymore. Mind you, I wouldn't turn it down. I'd like to pay off the damn doctors, but after that, I don't know."

"Hank, ya ain't nothin' anymore but a damned ol' desert rat. You're gonna jus' bake away out here.

"Me, I'd like to get out of this desert. Oh, I liked it okay when we first came out. Ya can't get no cheaper place to live, but I'm gettin' tired of rocks an' dust.

"I'd jus' like enough to get a little place back there in Indiana. I'd like to see some snow fallin' in the winter. An' see the corn growin' ag'in 'fore I kick the bucket.

"An' I'd sure like to see the backside of all the damn snowbirds for good. I'm sick of them people an' their motorhomes haulin' aroun' Jeeps an' motorcycles, kickin' up dust, crowdin' ya in, makin' lineups for gas, makin' lineups for the laundromat. Why half them ol' farts can't even drive."

It was two hours before Burt got back. Fran had clipped her coupons and gone through the bills. The ones they could pay were on the counter ready to mail. She was sitting on the couch, holding a piece of paper, with a perplexed look on her face.

"I jus' don't know what to make of this."

"What is it, Hon?"

"One of them envelopes was from the damn state tax."

"Ya mean we owe some money?" Burt was afraid it meant they weren't going to the casino.

"No, it's a check for fifteen hundred dollars."

"Fifteen hundred dollars. For us? What'd we get that for?"

"That's just it. They sent this stupid check without a word of explanation. An', far as I know, we're not entitled to it."

"So what, Hon? It's their fault if they made a mistake. We should jus' go ahead an' enjoy that money."

"That ain't the way it works with income tax. We spend this, an' sure as God made little apples they'll be askin' for it in a couple of months."

"So let's put it in the bank. We won't spend a cent till ya see what happens. That way, even if they want it back, we'll get some interest."

"Burt, if we put this in the bank, it'll get spent. Somehow it'll get spent.

"I wish they hadn't sent the damn thing. I don't like keepin' money that's not mine. I'd try callin', but they ain't even listed in our book. An' I'll bet ya couldn't get anybody that knows what they're talkin' about anyway."

"Well, Hon, I think we oughta put it in the bank an' jus' not spend any."

"If we put that in the bank, it'll get spent."

Burt got her drift. "Well, how 'bout ya put it in a new account? Jus' your name on it. How 'bout that?"

"Oh, I don't know. I s'pose we could do that. I'll write a letter to see if we can find out what in the Sam hill's goin' on."

Burt sat and played with his little electronic poker game while Fran wrote the letter. When she was finished, he volunteered to take out the garbage and drop the mail off. Fran figured the check put him in a really good mood. She almost always had to ask him about the garbage.

"Okay, Hon, anything else ya need while I'm out?"

"No, nothin'."

Burt stopped by the side of the trailer where the car was parked. A big, dull white, ten-year old Chevy. He was going to drive to the post office. He opened the creaky door and threw all the envelopes on the seat. Except one. Then he walked down toward the recreation hall. When he got to the dumpster, he threw the garbage bag in. He meant to throw Fran's letter to the tax office in, too. But he stood there, muttering. He carried it back to the car.

SHORT STORY: DARKNESS

SHORT STORY: DARKNESS


It was getting really late. Jack never wore a watch, but the contrast between the sky and the landscape had almost disappeared. Only the stars let you tell one dark mass from the other.

There wasn't a lot of traffic on the road, and for long periods it seemed the only thing disturbing the shadowy fields and barns was the fragile bubble of light surrounding the car as it quietly rose and fell and turned its way through the Pennsylvania mountains.

Jack was driving from Montreal to Chicago on the U.S. side. Although he'd driven home many times, he'd never made this drive. It was going to take him longer than he thought when looked at the map, but that didn't really matter. He loved long distance drives. And he was excited about getting back, if only for a couple of days.

Jack remembered the first time he went home so clearly. His homesickness was more than he could stand. He missed his place, he missed the way people talked to each other, he missed everything about home.

The thing Jack remembered most was being downtown in the park. He sat on a bench near Michigan Avenue just looking around, feeling like he'd been away for ages. It was a sunny day with small, puffy, white clouds drifting across the sky, a really beautiful day.

He could feel the hot sun across his back. The heat and the smell of the park reminded him of being a kid. The smell was the smell of empty lots, baking in the sun, full of weeds, the smell of the prairie.

He sat there on the bench, and it just seemed like everything was moving in slow motion. All the traffic on the street hardly seemed to move. It was like his brain was slowing everything down so he could take it all in. And the colors of things seemed so intense and new, even the green on the buses.

After that Jack was surprised how normal things seemed for everybody back home. He remembered how he watched people shop at all the familiar stores on 79th Street, laughing as they went for lunch at the Bon Ton, pulling carts full of groceries back to their apartments on sun dappled sidestreets, acting just like nothing had changed. It made him feel a little strange like he was in a dream or like he was a ghost watching people go on with their lives.

But that was a big part of why he kept going back, just to see that normality. He needed it to keep going. It was such a release from what he felt most of the time now, living in a place where people were so indifferent to everything he knew and cared about. Still, it made him feel like he was doing something he shouldn't be doing.

Jack started out of his reverie and glanced down at the dashboard. The car would need gas pretty soon. He didn't like letting it drop below a quarter. The idea of running out of gas in a strange place like this at night was scary.

A glow ahead on the left behind a hill looked like some kind of business was coming up. There might be a place to get some gas.

As the car got to the top of the hill, Jack was relieved to see an Esso station with a cheerful umbrella of light around the pumps.

The place was empty except for two or three men standing near a pickup truck at the far end of the lot where it was fairly dark. Something about the scene made him uneasy. It reminded him of creepy stuff that used to happen in Chicago, stuff he tended to forget about. He could feel old instincts take hold of him.

He didn't look directly at them as he began gassing up the car, but he kept aware of their movements out of the corner of his eye.

He heard their voices rise and saw some movement. Jack couldn't help looking directly over to see what was going on. The men had just removed something from the back of the truck.

They were holding some kind of animal, a good sized, brown animal, something like a woodchuck. Actually, just two of them were holding it, with its belly up and its feet splayed out. The third guy was poking it with a stick. They were all chuckling as they watched it squirm and twist.

Jack looked away, angry and afraid. You didn't want to stare at guys like this. But in just a minute, he heard more noises and sensed they were walking. He looked over again.

They had moved apart, maybe twenty feet apart. They were facing each other. Suddenly one of them kicked something the way you kick a football by dropping it from your hands.

It was the animal, curled up to protect itself. As it hit the asphalt and spun helplessly towards another guy's boots, he yelled out, Jack thought probably for his benefit, "Ya shouldn't oughta do that that there's cruelty!" They all snorted and laughed.

Jack's mind raced with thoughts of what he could do to stop them, fantasies of being a hero, but he knew at the same time it was useless. There were three of them, dressed in dirty camouflage. The truck certainly had guns in it.

He finished gassing up and walked toward the station to pay. He tried not to listen, but the only sounds in the night were the thuds of the animal's body as they kicked it back and forth and their insane laughter.

There wasn't any hope of help in the station. Just a kid with a glazed over look sitting, listening to the radio.

On the way back to the car he could hear them again, kicking and laughing. It made him sick. He just wanted to drive away as quickly as possible.

Jack drove out, shaking with fear and anger. He hated feeling so helpless. He'd felt like that so many times.

A dark wave of memories rushed over him. Other memories of growing up on the South Side. The angry black faces that terrorized a little kid starting school alone in the broken remains of an old neighborhood. The one who cornered him with a knife and stood there laughing at his fear. A maniac in high school who talked quietly about how much fun it was watching niggers run for their lives in his headlights when he cruised the ghetto with his buddies. The emotionless, young cop who told him how you needed some action now and then to keep sharp and then told him about a robbery where he got to shoot a jig kid in the face.

That was what they had set loose, men like that. Jack knew that as soon as they started the war. He couldn't understand why more people didn't know that. How easy it was to imagine the men at the gas station kicking a man senseless, a prisoner, somewhere in the jungle where he would die without anyone hearing his screams.

That was the stuff he never let himself think about when he came home. He didn't have the resources to deal with such complete bleakness, not after the survival he called his childhood, not with the loneliness that was his life now.

He just wanted to remember those few things, those precious few things that had given his life some richness, some meaning in all the chaos he felt swirling around him since he was a kid. He wanted to get home to his mother's cozy little apartment, to see his kid brother. He wanted to walk around the neighborhood. He wanted to sit by the lake.

SHORT STORY: INNOCENCE

SHORT STORY: INNOCENCE

Jack reached into the box of old things he was sorting and pulled out a large photograph he hadn't seen in years. It was showing its age. Some of the paper under the glossy finish had yellowed and some of the border was cracked and frayed, but the black-and-white image was surprisingly crisp and fresh-looking for forty-years old. It was a picture of Mrs. Nolan's second-grade class: Sweet, impish faces looking directly into the camera with broad, toothy smiles - city kids, with tousled hair and baggy clothes.

His seven-year-old face, head tilted to one side, smiling shyly above the round collar of a striped t-shirt, was in the back row where they always put tall kids for the pictures. In the front row, sitting in a plaid, cottony dress that looked more like a laundry bag, was Georgeann, with a big open smile, showing her missing tooth, and a stubby pigtail poking out behind each ear.

The picture filled Jack with nostalgia about that old neighborhood on 51st in Hyde Park and the way he and Georgeann used to explore the alleys and backyards and garage roofs - a patchwork kingdom of places to run and climb, of places to find things, of scary places and secret places.

He remembered bright, hot days with just a few puffy clouds in the sky, the kind of days that made you squint and wipe your eyebrows on the shoulders of your t-shirt so the heavy drops of sweat didn't get squeezed into your eyes. And he remembered the wide concrete pavement of the alley, with thick clumps of weeds growing in cracks and corners, shimmering in the hot sun like the pathway to a secret world behind the big apartment buildings.

There were rows of garages down the sides of the alley with gangways and gates to the backyards. And in every yard there were the big wooden porches and stairs, some elaborate enough, with several sets of stairs, to serve as forts and funhouses, all of them to be explored or used as hiding places. And there were hallways in some of those elegant old buildings that ran from the backyard to the front, a network of secret passages, tunnels and short cuts that honeycombed the neighborhood.

They used a fence or a tree to get high enough to reach over the top of a garage wall and pull themselves up, kicking against the rough bricks with their sneakers. Your arms stung when you first touched the big tiles on top of the wall, the way they baked in the sun, but you couldn't be a baby about that kind of thing. And the glazed surface of the tiles let you pull yourself onto the roof without getting sandpapered by bricks.

Sometimes you found good stuff up there, like balls or pop bottles, but mainly it was an adventure just climbing up and walking around, peeking down into backyards, hearing the crunch of gravel under your feet and feeling the hot sun almost like you were on the beach. Most people didn't care if they saw you, and the ones who yelled just added some excitement by making you run away scared.

Jack remembered their happiest adventure of all, the time they climbed the garage behind a house on 51st. It was hard to climb. There weren't any tiles, just a gutter to hold, and it wasn't a flat roof, it sloped steeply on every side. But they got up and crawled around, with the shingles scraping their hands and knees, to see what secrets were behind the garage.

There was a beautiful garden, all quiet and tree-shaded, behind some old row houses. You wouldn't even know it was there, the way it was surrounded by buildings. They sat back for few moments, catching their breath and just admiring their discovery of something they thought of as a lost valley.

They wanted to climb down and explore, but it would be hard getting back up from the garden so they decided to take a rest. They crawled to the next side of the roof where the brick wall of an apartment building offered a shady spot to lean against. They sat and ate penny candy they bought earlier at the little store with deposits from pop bottles they found.

And Jack remembered, when they were on the roof eating candy, the way Georgeann sat with her arms around her knees and the way she laughed suddenly and pulled up her skirt and asked Jack if he wanted to touch her underpants. It was something she did whenever no one else was around, and it was a secret pleasure that thrilled a seven-year-old boy.

When they peeked down again, there was an old woman with a wide sun hat and an apron working in the garden. She stopped what she was doing and looked up at them. There was such a sweet smile on her face, and she invited them to come down.

They took turns hang-jumping from the gutter, both of them looking scruffy and dirty from all their climbing, but the way the old lady smiled at them you could tell it didn't matter how they looked. She invited them to have a snack at a table and chairs on a little stone patio behind the house next to the garden. Jack sat there thinking he'd never seen a lovelier place.

The old lady brought them a tray of lemonade and home-made cookies. Then she sat down and talked to them while they ate.

Her name was Mrs. Beau, and she told them how her children were grown up and didn't live there anymore, but she still had lots of old toys in the basement. They could come in and play for a while after they finished eating. Jack couldn't imagine being any happier, sitting there by the quiet garden eating delicious cookies with Mrs. Beau.

But Jack's sunny, nostalgic thoughts about the picture were interrupted by something else, something dark and disturbing, something he never understood until those days were distant, faded memories.

He remembered how strange it was the first time he visited Georgeann's apartment. She took him by the hand to the bathroom and closed the door. Then she pulled down her underpants and lifted her dress, whispering for him to watch her go. She sat on the toilet with that smile that showed her missing tooth and her dress wound around her arms. Jack just stood there, staring, amazed how a girl could go and be all smooth like that.

And as they sat on the garage that day at Mrs. Beau's, nestled together against the wall, feeling waves of heat from the sun-baked roof, Georgeann started talking again about doing something else, something with his part and hers. Jack didn't really understand, even though she told him before just what you do. He liked seeing under her dress and touching her underpants, but this talk of hers always made him feel uneasy, and so he was relieved when she stopped and they went back to see the garden.

It was only now that Jack understood why she kept talking that way, why a little girl of seven, understood things he still didn't know a whole lot about when he left high school. Jack looked again at the picture of her laughing, innocent face, and he winced at the thought of the pain and sadness that it hid.

SHORT STORY: HOMESICKNESS

A prose-poem

SHORT STORY: HOMESICKNESS


It was such a beautiful day. Perfect. The sky was blue, the kind of blue, infinite and crystaline, you only see on the prairie. You sensed its vast expanse even though you only saw patches of it through the leaves overhead.

The sun penetrated the leaves in beams, mellow golden beams. Beams thick and textured with the microscopic fluff of a hundred nameless wildflowers. Wildflowers whose pungent scents perfumed the air, drifting in from empty lots and schoolyards, railroad tracks and even cracks in sidewalks.

And the trees were filled with the buzz and hum and drone of insects. The sidewalks and front yards shimmered with a mottled pattern of fuzzy, leafy shapes and splotches of golden brightness. Everything had the rich, textured warmth of antique photographs.

Jack was walking on a street he had walked a hundred times before. He was in no hurry. He wasn't going anywhere. Just walking, almost drifting really, feeling the warmth and easy comfort of a place he knew intimately, a place detailed and rich in his memory, a place he belonged and that belonged to him. The old neighborhood in Chicago.

It was all still there, everything he loved. He was deliriously happy to see it again. He'd been homesick for it so many times.

The old apartments, block after block of them, solid and dignified. Bay windows and courtyards, set back on grass. Streets canopied with trees. Rows of elms like natural cathedrals over grassy parkways. The buildings all of brick, mostly red or brown, but a dozen shades and textures. A hundred variations in design. Sills and pediments, creamy terra-cotta, lustrous in the sun. Courtyards embracing gardens. Front doors, heavy and beautiful, made to welcome people home from work.

The shopping streets like cozy, urban villages. Busy with people coming home from work. Walking from the train. Stores with names that seemed important, unchanging points in a child's happy landscape. Faces and voices as much the fabric of neighborhood as window fronts and signs and awnings.

Every block was lush and heavy with memories, the way empty lots are overgrown with wildflowers in the buzzy, summer heat. Running through alleys. Climbing porches and roofs. Catching his heels in the hot tar of sun-baked streets. Wiping the stinging sweat from his eyes. The shimmery path down sun-baked sidewalks. Pushing a creaky paper cart, hoping to make every third-floor on the first throw. Walking seriously to school.

Hot summer nights, velvety twilight dotted with the tiny, yellowy blinks of lightning bugs. The soft murmur of old people in lawn chairs in the front yards outside their apartments, cooling off before bed, gossiping, making a neighborhood.

A little further on Jack heard waves lapping and poplar trees rattling. He was in the park along the shore.

He saw the beach, golden yellow sand with white waves ruffling in from glossy swells on the lake's blue, translucent surface. Covered with people on blistering summer days. Water like a warm bath, lapping gently. The pier, huge rocks where children climbed, laughed and screamed in the splash and chill of deeper water, or sometimes watched people fishing in the soft quietness of evening. More lawn chairs in the park with old people whispering and nodding as darkness fell.

In winter they climbed icebergs along the beach. Explorers and mountain climbers building a fire. A hole in the sand to protect it from wind. The smell of roasting potatoes or apples.

Ice-skating in the park under the lights with music playing and big flakes falling. Crack-the-whip and tag. Hoping for the touch of a girl's hand or a frosty-breathed smile before crunching your way back, past cheery, steamy store windows, to a cozy, overheated apartment.

And he remembered seeing her the first time. Arms full of books. A warm face laughing girlishly. Her dark blue coat flapping carelessly against the tops of her knees. Long dark socks hugging underneath. The braid of her hair dancing from side to side, chestnut rich, long down her back. Wispy bangs over eyes, blue and heavy-lidded. Cheeks and ears, neck and knees, blushed, as warm- and soft-looking as the coat of a young horse.

Jack awoke. At first, all the comforting sensations of his dream lingered. Then they faded quickly like the image of a light bulb after it's clicked off.

He sat up in bed and started to feel anxious. He remembered where he was and why.

The war. Safe in Toronto from the faces full of hatred, full of anger, the shouting and the killing. Things he never knew were part of what he loved. Things he wanted no part of. Years of loneliness and bitterness in a place he felt no love for and felt no love for him. A homesickness so overwhelming he really thought he couldn't take it any longer. Thinking the madness would never end. Always hoping he could go back when it was over.

And then he remembered what he didn't want to remember. Everything he dreamed was gone.

He remembered the pain of seeing the broken place he loved. After so many years. The park tired and patchy and overgrown. Abandoned. Not a poplar tree left. No summer voices on the beach. The shopping street desolate, scarred with bars and boards, empty stores and paint-smeared walls. Not a sign or a window with a name he knew. And strangers lived in all the buildings now. With eyes that feared or made you fear.

SHORT STORY: NIGHT TIME ON THE SOUTH SIDE

The dark side of growing up in a city like Chicago.


SHORT STORY: NIGHT TIME ON THE SOUTH SIDE

John Chuckman

Jack wasn't eighteen yet, and, despite his unusual height, he wasn't much of a tough guy. He hadn't thought a lot about getting home until it was time to go. But when he left the office lights behind and said good-bye to the all the older guys driving home, none of them heading his way, and especially when he stepped into the silence of the dimly lit street with its blocks of industrial buildings, he began to regret taking the job.

Mr. Johnson's words from the interview came back to him, "The job starts Saturday afternoons, an' it goes till we're done. That's not gonna be before midnight, an' us'ally it'll be somethin' more like two in the mornin'. Is'at gonna be a problem without a car?"

He wanted the job so much. It was only part-time, but there was a good chance they'd make it full-time. Then he'd be out of the dusty library basement downtown where he'd worked the last couple of months since high school. And he'd be working for a big magazine with a chance of becoming something.

"No, sir, that's no problum. The I.C. doesn't run too often at that time, but I'll manage okay."

Except for seeing the place from the train, Jack didn't know the area around 22nd Street at all. There weren't any stores, not that stores would be open at two in the morning, but the light from their signs and windows would be reassuring. Instead, there were just the dim brick industrial buildings and the echoes of his footsteps.

But it wasn't many blocks to the station, and Jack was a fast walker. He got there quickly, but then he was fretting about how far down the long stretch of platform the train would stop, and that mattered because it would be a real short train, and, if he missed it, the next one wasn't for two hours. He decided to walk out about half way.

Suddenly, there were voices on the platform. He looked back carefully. They were just guys from some factory, he could tell from their lunchboxes, three of them standing together down where he'd just come from. He could hear bits of their conversation, and the sound of their laughter was reassuring. If they were regulars, they knew where the train stopped, so he walked back towards them.

Jack watched the yellow light bobbing in the distance, tiny at first but growing larger, glistening off the rails ahead of it. The silhouette of the train soon rushed out of the darkness, and its heavy bulk squealed to a stop.

It felt good to sit down, heading home, but he couldn't relax too much. If he dozed off and missed the 67th Street stop, he'd wake up miles from home on this line. He really didn't need to worry very much about staying awake, because he was just a little terrified about getting off to transfer at 67th Street in the middle of the night. It was the southern end of the 63rd Street ghetto.

He remembered that time late at night on the El, on an almost empty train, when he glanced over his shoulder and saw three black guys get on. He only saw them for a second, but it didn't look good, the way they stood in the doorway whispering, and one of them was wearing dark glasses.

He could hear them come towards him and stand in the aisle just over his shoulder, but he didn't turn his head again. That looked too much like fear.

Then the guy with the dark glasses was in front of him, dropping into the jump seat, close enough to brush Jack's knee. He leaned into the corner at the front of the car so his body kind of sprawled out towards Jack, and he cocked his head to one side. He was staring at Jack. Jack could hear the other guys sliding into the seat behind him.

Normally, the guy would have looked almost funny with a dark straw hat balanced on the back of his head, the brim all turned up, and a few scraggly tufts of beard dangling from his chin. But he just glared at Jack through blank, dark lenses.

Jack was determined not to keep looking since that's all some crazy guys needed to start trouble. He focused on the front window, where he couldn't see much in the dark outside, but there was a dim reflection of the two guys behind him. That could be the only warning he'd get.

Jack tried looking calm, while he frantically worked through each possibility, hoping he'd know what to do when the time came. Still, somewhere in the back of Jack's brain, there was a fragile little hope that his fear was exaggerated and unnecessary.

Jack remembered not being sure at first, but he thought the guy in front was saying something, so he looked at him again, with the mildest expression he could manage.

Even though all Jack could see were jiggly reflections of the car's overhead lights in his black glasses, there wasn't any doubt the guy was still staring. And he was saying something. His lips were moving slowly, mumbling really, through a menacing grin. It took a second, with all the blood rushing through Jack's head and the train roaring over the tracks, to catch the words.

"Hey, - whi' - boy, - you - is - gettin' - off - at - da nes' - stop."

That fragile speck hope just disappeared, and for a few seconds Jack had no idea what to do. There wasn't anybody in the car who could help him, and a fight against three guys was crazy. If he got off, and they followed him, he had a good chance of outrunning them, but maybe they'd just be happy he was doing what they said.

Jack jumped up just as the train jerked to a stop and the doors whirred open. He ran onto the platform, unbuckling his belt and pulling it off. He wrapped it partway around his knuckles, leaving the buckle end dangling, and started running down the platform. But as the small train screeched off down the elevated structure, lighting up the night with blue electric flashes, he realized he was alone.

"67th Street Station - transfer for local South Chicago train," came scratchily over the loud speaker.

Jack was the only one that got off. In seconds the doors slid shut, and he watched the huge I.C. cars glide off, carrying their neat rows of warmly lighted windows away into the night.

The local train wasn't there yet, but he could see he was completely alone. Down the middle of the platform a row of lights capped by metal dishes made little umbrellas of yellowy light. The platform made Jack think of a long, empty pier sticking out into the lake at night.

The old apartment buildings near the tracks were quiet and dark except for a few dim, yellowy lights on back-porch stairs. Little gusts of wind rustled the leaves of trees you could barely see, and you could hear those reedy and chirpy sounds of insects in the weeds that grew along the tracks.

Again Jack didn't know where the train would stop, but he decided it was best to stand where he could see the door to the street. The trains ran on a high embankment in that area, passing over streets like 67th on viaducts. Every rustle or creak of the trees made him look down the long flight of stairs to the doors.

Then he heard the slight hiss in the overhead wire that told you a train was coming. He turned and watched it race towards him through the dark, the headlight bobbing around from the dips and sways in the track, making him think of a boat speeding to his rescue over a deep, dark lake.

A week later Jack was walking towards the station again, dreading the trip home, wondering how many times you could take a chance before something happened, when the lights from a car came up from behind. It startled him a little. He turned his head but kept walking. The car rolled up to the curb just ahead of him. A guy yelled out, "Which way ya goin'?"

He sounded friendly. Jack answered without really thinking about it much.

"Out ta South Shore."

"I'm headed out that way. Jump in. I'll drop ya off."

Normally, Jack wouldn't think of taking a ride from a strange guy. His mother pounded that into his head when he was little, but he was tired, and the guy looked alright, a little on the hoody side with dark hair swept back and a white t-shirt, but lots of guys looked like that. He sounded okay, and Jack figured he worked somewhere around there. And there was just something about being asked like that, it took an effort to say no, and if the guy was weird, Jack was alone on the street with him anyway. So he got in.

"Thanks."

"Whereabouts ya wan' me ta drop ya?"

"As close ta 79th an' Jeff'ry as you're goin'." Jack thought it was better not to give his address.
He could walk home easily from around there.

"Okay."

They rode up the Outer Drive without talking, but underneath the quiet, Jack sensed something that worried him a little, a kind of a tension or impatience. But at times like that you can never be sure you're not just imagining things, and you don't like thinking bad things about a guy doing you a favor.

They turned off the Drive into Jackson Park, heading for Jeffery Boulevard, and pulled up to a stoplight. It was a little eerie sitting at the stoplight in the middle of the night with no cars or people around.

The guy suddenly turned to Jack and asked quietly, "Don't s'pose ya'd go for a li'le blow job now, would ya?"

All Jack could think about was getting out of the car. The guy was fairly well built and ten years older. His chances in a fight weren't good. He grabbed the door handle and opened it.

"Thanks, I'll get out here," he said with an amazingly polite tone. No matter how strange it seemed, something told him to keep it polite.

"Ya sure ya wanna get out here? This is nigger country."

"That's okay, I changed my min'. Thanks," was all he could think of saying as he slammed the door. He was surprised the guy just drove off. Jack watched the tail lights heading away for a few seconds.

He crept into the bedroom later, feeling exhausted from the long walk home and the fear. His brother was snoring, sound asleep. He could hear his mother, too, snoring in the living room. Everything seemed so ordinary and peaceful in the little apartment.

He got into bed wondering what he was going to do about coming home in the middle of the night. If he couldn't think of something, he'd have to quit the job. He was tired of being scared.
He wouldn't tell his mother any of this. It would worry her too much. He drifted off to sleep, despite the snoring, thinking if he only had a gun, he wouldn't worry about any more creeps.
That Sunday afternoon he told his brother about what happened.

"Ya know, Kid, travelin' at night like that ain't so great. Las' night this creep got me in a bad situation. It was part my own fault for ever takin' a ride, but I only went 'cause I'm tired a worryin' if I'll get home on the train.

"Don't tell Mom none a this. I'm only tellin' you, 'cause maybe ya can help."

"Jeez, Lips, ya better be careful! What could I do?"

"Ya 'member tellin' me how ol' man Shapiro keeps a couple a small guns aroun' the drugstore just in case, an' how he got one for the guy daliv'rin' milk?"

"Yeah, that's right. Ya mean ya want me ta see if he can get ya one?"

"That's what I was wonderin'. Could ya try an' see? I can't think a anything else ta do, 'cept quit."

"Sure, I'll ask 'im Monday when I do daliv'ries. He'll prob'ly be able ta."

That Monday evening his brother signaled him to come into the bedroom after supper.

"Shapiro says he can get ya a derringer or a 25-caliber automatic."

"The automatc'd be best."

"He wants fifty bucks for that."

"Okay, I got the dough in the bank. I'll get it right away. Do I jus' give it ta ya or what?"

"He said that'd be fine."

"Well, thanks, Kid. Maybe ev'rythin'll be awright."

Wednesday night his brother had the gun. He also had a little file card with some stuff typed on it that Shapiro wanted Jack to sign and return.

It was a heavy little thing, dark gray metal, showing signs of wear, shaped just like a model of an Army forty-five. Jack ran his finger over some engraving on the side of the barrel. The words were Nationale Fabrique, Belgique.

"Oh, Jeez, Kid, this is neat. Thanks a lot. Do ya think he could get me some bullets?"

"I'll ask 'im."

"Well, even without bullets, not too many guys're gonna argue with this."

"Okay, but ya better be careful, Lips."

Each evening Jack spent a few minutes sitting on the creaky floor boards in front of the little bedroom closet, holding the gun to get the feel of it and, really, just admiring it like a remarkable secret treasure. He even took it apart once and put it back together, proud of discovering that it worked the same way as the forty-five he'd handled in ROTC.

He started thinking a lot about how he was going to carry it. You couldn't put it in your pants, he tried, and it pulled down the waistband. Besides, you could make out the shape of it against his leg. And when he tried it in the thin cotton jacket he wore at night, it hung there in his pocket like a paperweight in a sack, pulling the whole side down with its dense, hard weight, but at least you couldn't tell what it was. He'd have to keep his hand in his pocket and hold it when he wasn't sitting.

And he started thinking about just what would have to happen for him to pull it out. He relished the thought of surprising some creep with it, giving him a little of his own medicine. Maybe it was better not to have any bullets. He sure didn't want to go shooting anybody. Then he thought about what he'd do if the creep had a gun, too. Things weren't so clear, especially when you didn't have any bullets. He really didn't know what he'd do, and he didn't like thinking about it.
On Saturday, not long before he started getting ready for work, his mother called Jack into the kitchen where she was standing next to a little pile of laundry.

"Jack, I was doin' some warsh down in the basement, an' I foun' somethin' in Joe's pants." She held out the card he had signed for Shapiro and gave him a really stern look. "Does this mean you have a gun?"

Jack's face felt like all the blood was drained out of it. "Yeah, I only got it 'cause I jus' don't feel safe comin' home late at night like that."

"It doesn't matter what the reason is. There'll be no guns in this house. Now, go an' get that thing right now an' give it ta me."

Jack went to the bedroom and got the gun from behind a stack of stuff in the closet. When he came back, his mother put out her hand to take it.

"Are there any bullets in this thing?"

"No, Mom. I hope you're not jus' throwin' it out. That cos' me fifty bucks."

"Oh, don't worry none about that. I'm takin' this back myself an' tellin' Shapiro a thing or two 'bout sellin' guns ta kids. I'll get that money back from 'im. You can count on that.

"An' I don't want ya doin' nothin' stupid like this ag'in. Is 'at un'erstood?"

"Yeah, Mom, but he only sold it ta Joe 'cause a me."

"I don't care. You ain't much more'an a kid yourself. An' regardless, ya ain't got no business with somethin' like this. He oughtta have the brains ta know that! An' look who he sol' it ta, your brother. Why he's just a baby."

"Ma, Joe only did it 'cause I tol' 'im I was scared commin' home at night."

"Well, you'll jus' hafta give up on that job then. I know ya like it, but if you're not feelin' safe, give it up. One thing's for sure, you're not runnin' aroun' the city a Chicago with a thing like this."

Jack went to the bedroom and stretched out on the bed. In a couple of minutes his brother came in and stood in the doorway with one hand on the frame.

"Sorry, Lips, 'bout the card."

"'at's okay, Kid, it's prob'ly jus' as well. Who wants ta go gettin' in that kinda trouble, anyhow? I wasn't thinkin' too clear when I asked ya 'bout gettin' it."

"So whatcha gonna do?"

"I'm gonna quit. Forget about workin' for a magazine. What choice is there with aw the nuts runnin' aroun' out there at night?"

"You'll fin' somethin' else."

"Yeah, I guess. I sure hope Mom doesn't go goofin' things up with Shapiro. Ya know how she can be. She'll go in there like gangbusters."

"It's okay. He'll un'erstan', an' if he don't, I can do daliv'ry for somebody else.

"Oh, I meant tell ya, Lips. Las' week I saw Molyneaux at schoo'."

"Yeah, really, what's he doin'?"

"He ain't teachin' at Bradwell anymore. He's a vice-principal someplace. I don't know what he was doin' at schoo', but he saw me an' asked what ya were doin' these days."

Jack was visibly affected by the idea of his favorite old teacher asking about him. He was the kind of teacher you'd want to go see when you got to be big shot on a magazine and tell him all about it.

"So what'd ya tell 'im?"

"I jus' said ya were workin' down in the basement at the library."

"Jeez, Kid, cou'n't ya make it soun' a li'le better 'an that? Whatcha go an' tell 'im I'm workin' in a basement for?"

"Well, I cou'n't think a what ya call your job. Ya work in the basement, don't ya?"

"Yeah, but ya di'n't hafta go sayin' it like that."

"What was I s'posed ta say, huh?"

"Oh, I don' know. I s'pose it ain't gonna soun' real great no matter how ya say it."

"Well, anyhow, he said ta say hi ta ya."

SHORT STORY: STRANGE DREAM

Visions of hell and atomic-bomb drills


SHORT STORY: STRANGE DREAM

John Chuckman

The night the president said he was sending more troops to Vietnam Jack had a terrible dream.

He was alone in the apartment, the old apartment on 79th Street. He went to bed after watching a late movie on T.V. and just lay there for a while in the humid, summery darkness, listening to sounds out on the street, trying to fall asleep. Finally, he did.

Then suddenly he was awake again. It was still dark. There was a loud sound outside. It was a harsh, wailing sound that kept rising and falling.

He knew what it was. He'd heard that sound so many times. Every Tuesday morning at 10:30, for years. It was the air-raid siren. He lay there, terrified, listening to the gloomy, mechanical sound, hoping it would stop. But it didn't stop.

He jumped up from bed, breathing hard, feeling sweaty and clammy all over. He ran to the living room. The windows were open because it was hot. A thin breeze was pushing at the curtains.

Jack knelt in front of a window and looked out. He was relieved that it was such an ordinary-looking summer night, except for the people standing down on the street corner. It was late for so many people to be there. They were all looking up, listening, wondering what the sirens meant.

Suddenly the entire sky lit up with an electric-blue flash that was dazzling. It was so intense, Jack thought he could actually feel it penetrating the backs of his eyes. His face and eyes were stinging.

Jack sensed that the light faded quickly, as quickly as it appeared, although he was blinded by its afterimage. He noticed the sirens had stopped.

He could smell something burning. Then, dimly at first, he saw fires all over the neighborhood. Everything that could burn had burst into flames. Signs, awnings, doors, paint, curtains and tree tops all were burning, shooting sparks up.

He saw the people again on the street corner. They were burning, too. He watched in horror as their naked bodies stood burning, ashes flying up into the fire-lighted sky. Their flesh melted and ran in thick drops like hot candle wax.

He saw something off in the distance, just the edge of a huge, dark, blurry shape, towards downtown. His view wasn't clear, but it didn't matter. He knew what it was.

Within seconds he heard a tremendous explosion. He not only heard the sound, he felt it vibrate through everything. Just like the light flash, the sound of the explosion entered directly into his brain. Almost at the same time, a wind, more like a tidal wave than a wind, roared across everything in front of him.

The building trembled underneath him. Every pane of glass in the apartment seemed to shatter. Trees bent over and cracked, some were swept away like giant tumble weeds. The burning bodies were hurled off their feet, joining a torrent of signs and litter and trees, tumbling end over end down the street, some of it crashing into walls.

Then the walls that seemed so solid, as bodies and debris struck them, began to crumble. At first the brick walls swayed and looked almost rubbery. Then bricks broke loose and flew away on the raging wind. Finally, whole walls and buildings were swept away as the last bit of whatever anchored them broke loose.

Jack had this overwhelming sense of hopelessness, of everything he ever knew or cared about being wrecked and swept away.

Then there was another terrible sound. It was unrecognizable at first. It wasn't an explosion, although it was unbelievably loud. Actually, he had a sense of it not even being a real sound, yet somehow he heard it. It was the sound of trumpets.

He saw the dead people, burnt and broken, come back to life. They were standing again on the street. Again their faces, though all charred and misshapen, looked up to see what was happening. Jack didn't think it strange at all that corpses were alive.

Then the smoke and darkness simply disappeared, and it was a shining summer day. A small, brilliant spot appeared in the sky and quickly grew until it was larger than the sun. It was like a whirlpool of intense golden light.

A tiny figure appeared in the center of it and seemed to be moving down toward earth. It just seemed to glide down and looked bigger and bigger as it got closer. In a minute he recognized the figure. It was Christ. He looked exactly the way he looked in old pictures from Sunday school.

Almost instantly Jack was transported to a place he didn't recognize. It was a vast area, and it was filled with people as far as he could see. He knew they all had died.

He looked up. Christ was right in front of him. Only now he didn't look like Christ. There was the same white robe and long hair to the shoulders and beard, but the face was different.

It looked more like the face of a devil, and Jack knew it was gloating. There was something else in the face, almost like a second face projected onto the first. It was shadowy at first, but it grew clearer and clearer. It was the president's face.

SHORT STORY: A SENSE OF VALUES

Biographical anecdote as short story.


SHORT STORY: A SENSE OF VALUES

John Chuckman

"There's nothin' wrong with it. It's a perfec'ly good shirt."

It was a long-sleeved, white cotton shirt his mother was talking about. She'd ironed it so Jack could wear it to church that morning. But nothing could make him put that shirt on. And he didn't have to say it. Just the pained look on his face was enough.

"Weren't ya jus' tellin' me how ya di'n't have a white shirt for your class pi'ture at school?"

It was true. He did tell her that, although he rarely complained about stuff like that to his mother. But he did feel embarrassed when he was the only kid in the class picture without a white shirt. He never felt that way where they used to live. But this was a better neighborhood, and all the kids wore white shirts for class pictures.

"It's all ironed up nice for ya."

It was very hard saying no to his mother about anything. It had to be something he had awfully strong feelings about. Because there was this almost overwhelming sense of duty and obligation he felt to her. It was something kids in regular families wouldn't even know about.

All those times seeing his mother come home in tears. What could a ten-year-old boy say to comfort her? If he was bigger, he'd beat up some of those creeps at work.

He knew how she struggled to hold on to a job and raise two kids alone. How she worried about them in some of those neighborhoods every morning she went off to work. How she was always trying to find a better place they could afford to live.

But she was asking the impossible. She taught Jack to be proud and stubborn, and that's just what he was.

It was one night last week that two people from the new church showed up with a big cardboard box full of clothes. He was embarrassed when his mother let them in. But really, what else could she do? Once you answered the buzzer and the pastor's voice came over the speaker, you were stuck.

They'd just moved into the little apartment over a grocery and liquor store at 75th and Colfax. There wasn't any bedroom. His mother shared the Murphy bed with his grandmother. His brother slept on the couch, and he slept on a cot in the dinette. They did just fine. You might even say things were kind of cozy.

At least they seemed that way to Jack after what he'd been through. In the old neighborhood, their apartment was just as small, but he'd spent the last couple of years just being afraid. Afraid of getting beat up going to school. Afraid of getting beat up at school. Afraid of getting beat up on the way home. This neighborhood wasn't like that at all. He liked going to school now. In Jack's mind things were pretty good.

But that didn't mean you wanted guys from church around poking their noses into everything. Wherever they lived, they always went to church. His mother was just like that, Sunday school and church every week, but nothing like this ever happened before. Jack sat there mortified when they came in with their box of clothes. Did he look that bad on Sunday?

God, his mother even offered them coffee. He thought they'd never leave with their eyes, between sips of coffee and friendly smiles, carefully taking in every detail of the place. Probably trying to figure out how they all slept in there.

Jack swore he'd never be seen wearing a thing from that box. Nobody was going to be looking over at him in church, feeling satisfied about how they'd sent old clothes to that poor woman and her kids instead of throwing them out.

"Well, it's up ta you. I'm not gonna make ya wear it if you're dead set against it."

Jack was dead set against it. Actually, if it had been up to him, he wouldn't ever go back to that church. But that was expecting way too much from his mother. She'd never agree with anything like that. At least he'd show them he didn't need their junk.

"Ya better hurry up an' get somethin' else on, or you're gonna be late for Sunday school."

Later that morning, after Sunday school, Jack sat, as he always did, next to his mother and brother in church. Again, as he always did, he sat as still as possible so he didn't make noise in the rows of creaky auditorium chairs that served as pews. But he sat up really straight.

His face felt a little warm and flushed. And he was sweating a little, feeling nervous about anybody that happened to look their way. But he only saw them out of the corner of his eye because of the way he kept his head up, his eyes straight ahead. He was feeling fiercely proud of that stupid old plaid shirt.

SHORT STORY: COURAGE

Again, biographical anecdote as short story.


SHORT STORY: COURAGE

John Chuckman

It was lunch time, and Jack was hungry. He was thinking all the way home about having a can of soup. Tomato soup sounded good. Yes, he'd have that, with lots of crackers crushed up in it and pepper floating on top.

It was more than six blocks to school, and coming home for lunch meant he walked it four times a day, but Jack didn't mind. He loved walking through the neighborhood, once you got away from Kozmynski. University Avenue was a beautiful, mellow street lined with sun-dappled old apartment buildings and huge elm trees. All the streets around his part of Hyde Park were like that.

You didn't run into as many creeps walking home for lunch as you did after school. Anyway, coming home was a lot better than hanging around school. He hated the place. You always had to be worrying about things like guys running up from behind and hitting you in the head or pushing you down. That's why old Miss Hodgkins, the principle, kept a club in her office, and she didn't go into the schoolyard without it.

Jack was only nine years old, but he'd been coming home to make lunch ever since they moved from the old apartment on 51st. This was a lot better building, with no mice or roaches or anything, but it was when they found out about his new address at school that they transferred him to Kozmynski.

His mother cried when she found out. It made going to work every morning a lot harder on her. She knew what kind of a rathole it was, but there was nothing she could do. He'd just have to be brave for a while. She showed him how you do everything for lunch. She trusted him about using the gas and locking up. And he was proud of the way he could cook stuff like a can of soup or spaghetti or make a tuna-fish sandwich. He figured that was pretty good for a kid his age.

Jack turned in at his building before he got to the courtyard. He crossed the grass and walked through an archway in the creamy colored stone underneath the first-floor windows by the corner of the building. They always called it the tunnel when they were running around the neighborhood playing. It led to the gangway with all the back porches for his side of the building. It was closer than using the front door. He ran up the back-porch stairs two at a time.

There was just one thing now about coming home: Jack was still a little nervous from the time a few months back their apartment got robbed. He remembered all the drawers pulled out and stuff dumped all over. They didn't get anything, there wasn't much of anything to get, but it was still bothered you the way they threw all your stuff around. His mother got a good, new lock on the door, so there wasn't really anything to worry about, but still....

Jack turned the key in the lock and cautiously opened the door. He paused for a minute to run his eyes over everything and make sure it was okay. There was something dreamlike about the tiny, quiet apartment with the sunbeams pouring through the kitchen window, making patterns of window panes and plants across the shadowy floorboards of the front hall beyond the kitchen. The only sound was a steady clicking from the clock on the wall. It was a black plastic cat with eyes that moved back and forth with each click.

Something wasn't right. Back in the small hall that had the Murphy bed and some cupboards, a door was open, and in the shadows Jack was sure someone was standing there. He was pretty sure he could see shoes, like someone was standing behind the clothes hanging there.

He was too nervous to go in. He didn't know what to do, but he sure wasn't going in. He'd just wait for a while on the back porch. If nothing happened, then maybe he'd try going in. He stayed right in the doorway so he could see if anything moved.

Jack stood there for a while, every muscle tense, picturing some guy jumping out of the closet at him. As long as he was on the porch, he was pretty sure he could get away. He was a fast runner.
Finally, he decided he had to go in. There wasn't a whole lot of time left before he had to go back to school. He paced back and forth in front of the doorway a few seconds, breathing hard, his heart thumping. Then he walked in, slowly, never taking his eyes from the shadowy hallway. He froze when the floor creaked, but nothing in the hallway moved. He made his way to the drawer by the sink, pulled it out as quietly as he could and got out the paring knife.

Jack took a last large gulp of air before he headed into the hall, knife first. Almost as soon as he got near the closet, he could see there was nothing there but some old shoes of his mother's on the floor. Someone hadn't closed the closet door in the morning. Jack breathed a huge sigh of relief.

He went back to the little kitchen and looked at the clock. There wasn't any time left for soup. He put the knife away, opened the icebox and stood looking around inside. He reached for the milk carton and tipped it up for several good gulps. Then he got the ketchup and a couple of slices of Butternut bread and brought them over to the counter by the sink. He shook some big splotches of ketchup on the bread and put the bottle back.

He took one big bite of the ketchup sandwich before turning and going out the back door, stopping to lock it carefully, pulling the handle to make sure it was locked, just like his mother taught him. He figured he was leaving just in time to get to school for the bell. That's the way he always timed it, so he didn't have to stand around in the schoolyard.

SHORT STORY: THE COLD CHILL OF DARKNESS

A short story that captures some of my experience as a paperboy in Chicago. It demonstrates the quiet creepiness sometimes experienced in ordinary events, a la Hitchcock. It was not conscious, but I'm sure Jack London's To Build a Fire influenced the intense description of cold.


THE COLD CHILL OF DARKNESS

John Chuckman

It was really cold. Not just cold enough to see your breath. But cold enough to make your face numb if you didn't stop to warm up in the front hall of an apartment building once in while.

Jack could hear the snow squeaking under the tires of his cart and the bottoms of his floppy rubber boots. The set of tags with all his customers addresses fluttered and banged around on a big metal ring hooked to the cart handle.

It was the coldest Jack could remember. But it was the harsh wind that really made you shiver. And the little bits of snow it picked up that made your skin sting.

He could feel the wind slap against the side of his cart. But it was a sturdy thing, built like a buckboard. A big, shiny yellow crate, reinforced with metal ribs, with a wheel on each side like the ones on a wheel-chair and a little swively solid thing at the front.

He tried to keep his mind off the cold. He just wanted to deliver his papers and get home as fast as he could.

But it wasn't easy. The cold went right through his gloves after just a few minutes out. He tried blowing into the wrists, but that only helped for a couple of seconds.

And things just looked cold. Clouds of steam rushed out of all the manhole covers up the street and swirled up into the frosty streetlights. Then fierce gusts of wind drove them almost sideways and filled them with silvery bits of ice.

Some kid back at the agency said you didn't want to go near them when they were like that. The covers could blow off and kill you. Jack didn't know if it was true, but he crossed every street with a steamy manhole cover like he believed it was.

Normally there was nothing Jack liked better than the snow-laced trees overhead. But they were scary, too, now. The gusts of wind tossed the long, graceful branches into huge, sweeping movements. And there were creaking sounds. You couldn't help thinking about one breaking off. He'd seen branches down after storms.

Even a nice neighborhood seemed a little creepy at five-thirty in the morning, especially on a day like this.

Almost all the windows were dark. And even where someone left the Christmas lights on all night, they looked lonely in the windy darkness.

There was always a cozy yellow glow from the front halls of apartment buildings. But this street was almost all houses. Anyway, you didn't deliver in the halls. You only went in there to warm up. All the apartments got their papers on the back porches. From the alley.

That was the part Jack hated. The alleys. In the dark. Especially on a morning like this. The cold made everything slower and harder. If you had to walk one up, there was snow and ice on the back stairs. And the wind meant you couldn't throw so good. And maybe you couldn't hear someone creeping around.

It was funny, alone in the dark like that, especially with the wind howling, the scary thoughts you got. Jack put it down to being a skinny thirteen-year old. Nervous and not really tough enough. Raised by his mother. The manager's words kept going through his head. The guy knew just what to say. This was a man's route.

As much as he could, Jack had delivery down to a system. When it was warm, he rolled papers as he pushed his cart. That was the fastest way once you learned how to do it.

On bad days he rolled them all at once back at the agency. It took longer, but he couldn't roll papers with gloves on. And that way they didn't blow away. He could remember chasing fluttering sheets all over the street once and then trying to make them look like newspapers again.

Streets with houses went the fastest. He thought of it as kind of a performance really the way he lunged forward over the cart and grabbed a paper, then, letting the handle bar go, turned and threw it. He caught up with the cart in a couple of steps and started again. It felt good when it all went smoothly for several blocks.

But it didn't always go smoothly. And this morning he found himself stopping the cart several times and loping across the fresh snow in a front yard to fish a paper out of some bushes. It wasn't so bad, but the snow on the bushes at one place got pushed up his coat sleeve and left his wrist stinging.

Still, Jack got through the main part of his houses in decent time. He rolled his cart up to the side of an apartment building that went over some stores on 79th Street. The lobby was back near the corner of the alley behind the stores.

He'd warm up a few minutes before heading down the alley. The lobby was warm. There was a radiator under the mailboxes and beads of sweat on the door glass. But it was a couple of minutes before the heat penetrated Jack's stiff clothes. Everything he had on seemed brittle.

He slapped his cheeks a couple of times. The stinging from the wind had faded, and he wanted to make sure he could feel something. He read somewhere that you should start worrying when you couldn't feel things anymore. But it wasn't so easy to tell in this kind of cold just when that was.

He jumped up and down a little. Those rubber boots over your shoes kept you dry, but they didn't do all that much for the cold. Then he stood right against the radiator. He could feel a wave of cold leaving his body almost like cramps going away. Jack sat down on the stairs. The carpet was warm and thick.

From inside, the snowy night looked beautiful. The door's heavy cut glass caught glints of Christmas lights and signs from stores down at the corner. Everything outside was shades of twilight. And the wind swept it with glittery bits.

The door's heavy wooden frame and piston on top made Jack feel secure from the wind and the cold, but you could hear it move just a little with the big gusts. A slight rattle and a whooshing sound.

Jack thought nothing was prettier than the city coated with snow. But he didn't like this kind of cold. He wished he didn't have to go back out. He didn't even want to think about how much more he had to do. Four blocks of houses didn't make the stack of papers go down that much. Most of his route was apartments. He'd stop in several lobbies before he was done.

At least there weren't any starts this morning. He didn't have to search around in the dim light for the numbers on any new porches. He could just go by memory.

His old afternoon route sure was easy compared to this. In the daytime alleys weren't scary places at all. He played in them since he was a little kid. They honeycombed the old neighborhoods with shortcuts and secret passages, with roofs and porches to climb and hide on.
And it used to be fun on a sunny afternoon, rolling his cart down the alleys, seeing if he could make all the third floors on his first try. But that was about sixty papers. Now he had more than two hundred.

He used to get invited in sometimes. One lady baked gingerbread. But no one baked gingerbread at this time in the morning.

He got up after just a few minutes. The first blast of cold air made him stop thinking about anything like gingerbread. He turned his cart around and headed into the alley that ran behind the stores. He quickly left the umbrella of street light behind.

The alleys weren't completely dark. There were lights on some of the telephone poles. Not bright, modern ones, but they made these little pools of yellowy light down the pavement. And a lot of porches had dim lights on the stairs. So you could see your way around. But they were still places with all kinds of dark shapes. And there were all those dark gangways between the garages that led to dark backyards and dark basement doors.

Jack turned again, halfway down, to the alley that ran behind the side street he'd just come up. It was all apartments on the other side of the block.

He noticed the wind wasn't as bad as it was on the street. The buildings were blocking it a little. Throwing wouldn't be as bad as he thought. Except for the third floors. With the snow blowing around on the roofs, lighted dimly from the street, it was like you could actually see the wind whipping over the buildings.

If you had a decent arm, you could throw most of your papers from the middle of the alley. But stairs and porches came in a lot of different shapes. And with things like telephone poles and wires you couldn't always get a good angle. You had to go through the gangway and lob them from the back yard. Or, in some cases, walk them up.

Most porches were pretty small targets. You had to get it over the banister. Without hitting the back windows. And hopefully not the garbage cans. The garbage cans didn't matter when you delivered afternoon papers, but they sure did on mornings.

If you roofed it, you'd be short. That meant bringing another paper back from the agency when you were done. Usually, on big morning routes, the guy down at the agency would run one out for you in his car. But not always. And you didn't like asking.

Jack missed his first third floor. The paper bounced off the banister and spun down. At first, he thought it was in the yard. He pulled his cart over in front of the garages in case a car came by and went looking around the gangway and the backyard.

He couldn't find it. So he was pretty sure it was on the garage. He thought about climbing it and looked for a place to get a boost. Some garages were easy to climb. But there was nothing that looked easy with the snow and ice. And it was just too cold to be heroic. So he'd be short.

Jack had done a couple of blocks of alleys when he saw some car lights turn in about a block ahead. They were moving slowly. That made them look more sinister. He never liked meeting up with cars while it was still dark back there. It was scary the way they put you in a spotlight. With your eyes all adjusted to alley light, they just about blinded you. And you just never knew.

Jack pulled his cart over before it got very close. He'd lob the next couple of papers from the backyard. Hopefully the car would be gone then. He could always wait there a minute if it wasn't.

Jack had no trouble lobbing the papers. A second and a third floor. But the car lights were still there. He could see the glare from them over the top of the garages. He decided to wait. The lights weren't moving.

Jack walked slowly back through the gangway. He peeked nervously around the corner of the garage. It was hard at first to see anything in the glare but blowing bits of snow and some steamy exhaust.

Then he could see it was a station wagon. It looked like Larry's car, the manager from down at the agency.

Suddenly Jack felt silly about being so suspicious. He walked over to the car. Larry rolled down the window and yelled through the wind.

"How ya doin', Jack?"

"Oh, I'm a little behind with the cold. But I'm fine."

"Well, I was just takin' a check aroun', bein' so cold an' ev'rything. Jus' wanna make sure nobody's in trouble."

"Oh, no, I'm jus' fine. Thanks."

Larry held out a white paper bag full of something.

"Ya wanna doughnut?"

"Oh sure, thanks."

"Okay, Jack, we'll see ya back down at the agency."

He rolled up the window. Jack remembered the paper he roofed and started waving. The window rolled down again.

"Say, I forgot. Ya got an extra? I'm gonna be short."

Larry reached over on the seat and handed Jack a paper.

"Thanks, Larry, see ya later."

Jack watched the car roll away for a second, silhouetted against its headlights. The doughnut tasted really good. And he noticed it was starting to get light out.

SHORT STORY: THE COSMIC HUM

A story written and published in a couple of small literary magazines years ago. I think it tells us something fundamentally true about the universe, while having some satiric fun along the way.


SHORT STORY: THE COSMIC HUM

John Chuckman

It was the first transmission ever received from another world. Picked up by a radio telescope pointed at a nearby star where the existence of planets had only recently been absolutely confirmed. The signal was extremely weak, coming, as it did, across several tens of trillions of miles of space, through a cosmic sea of radiation, the churning, pulsing clatter of numberless stars being born and dying.

It was only through recent advances in technology that it was possible to identify it. Apparently, there was no doubt from its first reception that it represented intelligence.

It hadn't been a big story in the press when they actually confirmed that planets existed around other stars. Lots of scientists had speculated for decades that planets were as common as stars in the universe. And for years they found all kinds of hints and bits of evidence. But, still, that wasn't the same thing as proving planets existed. So you'd think that would have been a big story, but, outside of scientific circles, it wasn't.

After the first discovery they went right on discovering more. But it still wasn't a big story. Just a brief mention on most popular broadcasts. There was an article in Scientific American, an interesting piece in The Economist and a full page in The Science Times.

But even the transmission wasn't a big story. Maybe it was because they couldn't understand it at first. But you'd sure think that the first proof of other intelligent life in the universe would have more of an impact than it did.

There were tantillizing little bits that appeared in the press as they processed the data through big computers and got some preliminary indications of what they contained. There was a fair amount of interest when they were pretty sure it was a television broadcast of some kind. For weeks after that, there were rumors about images of strange beings. There was a rumor about images that looked like lizards, or as some of the tabloids put it, like devils.

Interest really picked up with that rumor. Every tabloid in the supermarkets had artists' renditions of berserk, lizard-like aliens shooting people with death rays and heading back to their spaceships with beautiful girls slung over their shoulders.

The rumors caused a huge surge in TV evangelism. It got so some of those guys were on every night. The networks bumped a lot of their regular, primetime shows. The money must have just poured in. Several of them had special offers on videos and books telling you all about prophecy and aliens. Even though they all seemed to agree it meant the end of the world, you could still use your charge card to order.

The scientists, apparently concerned about the impact of their findings, delayed announcing them. They said they wanted to do some more work with the computer to be absolutely sure. But that just had the effect of creating more rumors. There was a flood of new tapes and books about stuff like ancient authorities trying to prevent Ezekiel from telling what he knew about flying saucers.

Finally the big day came. It was on every channel. An actual taped transmission from another world. Just before the broadcast all the networks had experts on hand, sitting in front of sets that looked like book-lined studies, to discuss the impact of the tapes. They agreed it likely would be serious, particularly on children.

Every stadium in America was rented out either to evangelists holding end-of-the-world services or rock-concert promoters holding space-alien parties. The places with jumbo TV screens and stereo sound were sold out. There were plenty of space-alien block parties, too. One of the big pizza chains had an alien special on deliveries that night.

People everywhere gasped when the first images flickered onto the screen. The aliens were repulsive. Hideous, with slimy skin and bulbous, glassy eyes. They did look like demons of some kind.

But as the tape continued, it became clear that it was only the appearance of the aliens that was strange. In every other respect they seemed just like people you'd meet in any nice suburb. It wasn't long before you could hear yelling and booing about what a disappointment it was. Boring. A waste of time. Although there was some laughing.

The next morning at work a lot of people talked about how boring it was. Not scary at all. They complained about the poor picture quality or the black and white. Or the fact you couldn't understand a word they were saying. The way it looked like some old thing from the 1950s. The TV ratings showed that a lot of people turned their sets off before the tape was over.

One especially perceptive critic in a newspaper column that day said he couldn't be positive but he was almost sure the tape actually was an alien version of an early episode of Ozzie and Harriet.

RESTAURANT REVIEW: BLACK TIE CAFE, YARMOUTH, MAINE

Review of an outstanding restaurant written for The Maine Sunday Telegram when I served as restaurant reviewer there. Menu, prices, and possibly other information are now out of date.


RESTAURANT REVIEW: BLACK TIE CAFE, YARMOUTH, MAINE

John Chuckman

At last, the Black Tie Café serves dinner, not at its original location in the Old Port, where the throbbing beat of a nightclub upstairs apparently discourages an evening menu, but at a new location in Yarmouth.. This has been open for less time than I like to allow for the kinks in new operation to be worked out, but a call to a friendly and helpful staff member assured me things were running smoothly. So I made a reservation.

And they do have the kinks out. They have transformed a small, nondescript building along Route One into a special destination. Going there reminded me of one or those wonderful discoveries along a small road in the French countryside, a charming little restaurant run by people who love food.

You enter immediately into a bright, pretty gourmet food shop and a waft of aromas. A door at one end leads to the restaurant. Here the lighting changes to warm and subdued, against chocolate-colored walls, creamy rough paneling below the chair rail, and the luster of oak-strip floor. The tables have crisp linen and handsome candle-fixtures flickering under shades. A few cozy booths to one side, another on a dais at the back, an open waiter-service pantry in a back corner - these few architectural touches transform a simple rectangular room into an intimate and inviting space.

Service is more than good at Black Tie, it is intelligent. This is apparent in the way you are greeted, the way details are automatically attended to (as when a knife - carried off, as it should be, with an appetizer plate - is quietly replaced), and in the discussion of wine and food. The style of service might be characterized as informal but crisp. Later, I noticed the staff of three working with the smooth harmony of a small stage troupe. Whatever needed attention, such as resetting a table, was taken up by the first available hands.

The occasional gruff sound from the kitchen adds the right note of food-centered informality. We were advised by our waiter that these occasional, muffled grunts were the cook's way of announcing orders.

The wine list is interesting. The selections are mainly from California, and, most interesting, they are all vintages, something that would not have been possible many years ago. If half the listings prove as good as what we enjoyed, there are many pleasant discoveries ahead. The wine list has full bottles only, but there are daily selections by the glass posted. In response to our request, the waiter recommended a California Merlot that proved exceptional, Hahn 1997, Monterey ($5.75 a glass). This is dusky, fruity, liquid velvet.

A basket of bread is brought immediately, sliced baguette, very tasty, with the distinctive aroma and flavor of sour-dough starter. It is especially nice with the sweet (unsalted) butter served. The crust lacks the crispness that this admirer of great bread enjoys on such a loaf, but this is about as serious a criticism as I have.

With a glass of delightful wine and some tasty bread, we are prepared to spend time studying the menu. The appetizers bring together a great many food traditions, from French and Italian to Thai. And this is characteristic of much of Black Tie's cooking, somewhat eclectic and, as is it proved, elegantly successful.

Keeping with this spirit, we had grilled-shrimp crostini with mushroom pate ($9) and Asian vegetarian spring rolls ($7). The crostini were excellent, the mushroom pate providing a rich, moist filling between plump shrimp halves and crisp bread, all drizzled with parsley butter. The spring rolls come sliced, releasing the scent of ginger and sesame, on a plate with a honey-lime glaze and topped with fresh greens. The greens and the glaze are more than decorative since the recommended way of eating spring rolls in Southeast Asia is wrapped with greens and dipped in piquant sauce. Food that reflects this kind of culinary understanding fills me with anticipation for the rest of the meal.

It is a summer menu, happily dominated by seafood, though there are beef, lamb, pork, chicken and vegetarian entrees (one of each) for those not delighted by salmon, crab, lobster, tuna, shrimp and mussels, or bouillabaisse.

The waiter was careful to ask how the pan-seared Pacific salmon ($18) should be done, again reflecting Black Tie's intelligent service. It came medium rare, the stage at which a fish like this remains succulent, arranged prettily with herbed mashed potatoes, Swiss chard, and lemon-dill veloute - a delicious combination.

Our other dish was a special, not on the regular menu, soft-shell crab on a bed of wide Thai rice-noodles with tomatoes, zucchini, Kalamata olives, crumbled Feta cheese, and a remarkable, pungent sauce reminiscent of Thailand ($22). Yes, that's right, Mediterranean and Asian elements combined in one dish using such a delicate seafood as soft-shell crab. And it works perfectly. This dish was among the best I have had in years, memorable for its delightful, unexpected blend of flavors from two of the world's great cuisines.

I was pleased to see the dessert menu topped by fruit and cheese, a delightful French custom that still has not widely caught on in America and that I would surely avail myself of another time. But I wanted chocolate, and the menu provides several intriguing ways to satisfy this craving. We selected the chocolate truffle flan ($5.25). Berries are another craving, so we also selected the mixed berry crisp ($5.25).

The flan was a complete success, a rich chocolate custard served with the sauce you'd find on a crème caramel. The berry crisp was less successful. There was a nice compote of blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries inside, but the crumb topping was less than crisp, and, most unsatisfying, there was too much of it underneath the fruit, reduced to porridge by liquids - my one low note for the evening.

Our bill came to $95.77. I'll be going back for the bouillabaisse.

NUGGET INFORMATION:
Black Tie Café
233 Route One
Yarmouth, Maine
846-8022
Food: 4 Stars
Atmosphere: 4 Stars
Service: 4 Stars
Dinner Hours: (Summer)
Monday and Tuesday: (Closed)
Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday: 5:30 PM - 9:30 PM
Friday and Saturday: 5:30 PM - 10:00 PM
Lunch Hours: (Summer)
Monday through Friday: 11:30 AM - 2:00 PM
Brunch Hours: Saturday and Sunday: 9:00 AM - 2:30 PM

Credit Cards: AE, MC, VISA
Price Range: Entrees $15.00 to $21, but with several items at "market"
Reservations: Strongly Recommended
Bar: Full
Wheelchair Access: From Rear Only and Throughout Restaurant; Step-down for Shop
Serious Cuisine in an Intimate Atmosphere


MAP LOCATION INFO:
On Route One , just north of Interstate at the south end of a strip of Yarmouth Area businesses along Route One. It is on seaward side of Route One.