Review of "Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer for this book and justifiably so. This book examines the battle of Gettysburg from several points of view including General Lee, Longstreet, Armistead and Buford. Of most interest to me were the sections that focused on the character and actions of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the university professor turned citizen-soldier, whose heroic actions during the fight for Little Round Top saved the Union army and, quite possibly, the war itself.

Shaara's prose is highly imagistic. Pickett's charge, which was the final act in the Southern defeat, gets this description. "And then the first shell struck near him, percussion, killing a mass of men to his right rear, his own men, and from then on the shells came down increasingly, as the first fat drops of an advancing storm, but it was not truly bad. Close it up, close it up. Gaps in front, the newly dead, pile of red meant. One man down holding his stomach, blood pouring out of him like a butchered pig, young face, only a boy, a man beding over him trying to help, a sergeant screaming, 'Damn it, I said close it up.'"

What I also got from this historical novel were the various attitudes towards war in general and the Civil War in particular. Longstreet knew that the tactics were wrong and the final charge hopeless. Lee simply wanted to do right by his men and his "country" meaning Virginia. Chamberlain believed that the war was something new, people willing to fight and die for an idea, that all people should be free. Of all the characters he comes through with his ideals entact. Though he recognizes the tragedy of what is happening to the nation he loves.

Shaara's title reflects the paradox that was the Civil War. He ends the book with a quote from Winston Churchill's "A History of the English Speaking People" that calls the war the "least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts. . . ." The irrepressible conflict settled the great unsettled question of the American Revolution: do we truly mean it when we say that all humans are by nature equal and therefore equally deserving of liberty and dignity. Men like Chamberlain helped to insure that the answer was "yes".



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My Review of "Endgame" by Frank Brady

Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - From America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness by Frank Brady

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Fascinating and balanced account of America's greatest chess master.

Two things are undeniable about Bobby Fischer: 1) He is the greatest American chess player of all time, perhaps the greatest anywhere, though I cannot state that categorically. 2) He was a deeply self-centered man who believe that his genius gave him entitlement to say and do whatever he pleased. This book explores both aspects of Fischer. And while it becomes at times too apologetic for his egotistical, paranoid, self-destructive behavior, Frank Brady pulls no punches in describing Fischer's dark side while acknowledging Fischer's genius.

What to make of Bobby Fischer? As some have pointed out, we regularly overlook the negative sides of many fellow geniuses to enjoy what they have produced. I enjoy the music of imperfect me like Beethoven and Wagner. I appreciate the art of Paul Gaughan knowing how he exploited women. I enjoy the movies Eliz Kazan while deploring his betrayals before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Do I put Fischer in this group of people who were great artists, but flawed humans? Yes and no.

Yes, I do believe that Fischer was a genius who produced the type of beauty Marcel Duchamp saw in chess, but I believe that Fischer's ability to play a game does not entitle him to anything but condemnation for his insenstivity to other people, his persecution complex, and his ungracious behavior to any who displeased him in the slightest.

I read one time that, "while gratitude may be the humblest of virtues, ingratitude is certainly one of the worst of all vices." I believe that Fischer's worst vice was that he could not see past his own, largely imagined hurts and attacks.

For me, this taints Fischer's remarkable accomplishments on the board.

And even though he was a great genius at it, he still was playing a board game. Would I seek to mitigate this behavior in someone who played checkers, parcheesi, or mahjong? I would not, and I cannot forgive Fischer for believing that his ability to play a game played by young children made him any better or any more entilted that the rest of us.



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Reading The Last Stand

The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn by Nathaniel Philbrick




Very complete account of the major players in the diaster of the Little Big Horn fight and the tragic events that followed Custer's defeat. My wife and I visted the battle site on the anniversary of the battle and witnessed a Native American ceremony dedicating a new memorial to the Indians who fought in the battle.



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Could Lewis's Science Fiction be turned into a film?

Perelandra, the second of C. S. Lewis' Science Fiction trilogy.
My wife and I went to see the film adaptation of C.S. Lewis's 3rd installment of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I enjoyed the film, which, with a few changes, followed Lewis's plot quite well. The film has underperformed at the box office, but I hope this will not end hopes of a production of the next book in the Narnia series: The Silver Chair.

Narnia, of course, is not the only fantasy fiction written by Lewis. He also wrote The Screwtape Letters, a brillant satire in which a "senior devil" named Screwtape gives advice to his nephew "Worwood" who has been given the responsibility of leading a human "patient" to the man's damnation. (Wormwood fails.)

Lewis also wrote a science fiction triology prior to Narnia, and I am tempted to wonder in this day when science fiction works like Star Wars, Startek and many other titles appear annually, whether some producer might be tempted to have a go at Lewis's contribution to the SF genre.

The three book titles are Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. I believe the last book is greatly inferior to the first two for reasons I'll discuss later, but the first two involve themes popular in SF movies: space travel, new species, alternative worlds, evil scientists, even devils. Silent Planet and Perelandra also have something rather unique to their credit: they are both examples post World War I utopian fiction, a genre not often seen in our time.

In the first book ,Out of the Silent Planet a linguist, or philologist in British terminology, named Elwin Ransom is kidnapped by two men, one a former school mate ironically named Devine and the other a professor of physics named Weston, and taken to Mars, named Malacandra by its inhabitants. There Ransom escapes his captors and flees them meeting in his flight the various creatures who inhabit the planet. He uses his language skills to learn their langauge and discovers that they live a near perfect existence free from war, hatred, greed, adultery, and other sins that exist on Earth, which is known on Malacandra as "The Silent Planet." Ransom discovers that the reason for the Malacandran's utopic existence is that the Fall experienced by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden never happend on Malacandra. Ransom eventually is reunited with Devine and Weston who reveal the worst of human qualities to the Malacandrians. Because their prescence is deemed harmful to the Malancandrian world, all three are sent back to earth.

In Perelandra, Ransom is summonded to Perelandra, aka the planet Venus, to help the inhabitants of a new creation. There he discovers a world made up largely of floating islands with some "Fixed Land". He meets one of the two human inhabitants of the planet, a female named Tinidril. Her mate is nowhere to be found. Both Tinidril, who is green skinned, and Ransom are naked, but the is no hint of lust between the two. Soon they are joined by another earth man, Prof. Weston of the previous novel. Weston soon becomes the vehicle by which Satan is able to enter Perelandra for the purpose of tempting Tinidril to do the one act God has forbidden: remain overnight on the Fixed Land. Ransom realizes that his job is to prevent another Fall. He does so, at first, through argument and debate with Weston. Finally, he physically fights Weston, defeats and kills him. Tinidril is then reunited with her mate, and Ransom is returned to Earth.


Both of these novels create utopic worlds based on Christian theology. Because the creatures of Malacandra never fell, they are naturally good, chaste, peaceful and just. We can assume that the same will happen for the descendents of the first couple of Perelandra. All will be born free of original sin and obedience to God and righteous living will be natural for them.

The third work of Lewis's trilogy That Hideous Strength, set on Earth, has a much darker tone than the previous his two books. The work is also an unfortunate mishmash of science and fantasy with everyone trying to discover the secret chamber where Merlin the magician sleeps.

Once utopias were fairly common starting with Sir Thomas Moore's novel Utopia. Works like Erewhon by Thomas Butler, News from Nowhere by the English Socialist William Morris, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, an Ameican Socialist, and even Herland by the American feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. All of the books outlined the writers' vision of beneficial futures created through sound political and philosophical principles.

Utopias are fairly rare in our time. Two world wars, paricularly World War I, seems to have ended the writing of utopias in favor of dystopias. Lead by works like 1984 by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley'sBrave New World the future was seen as a dark and scary place to be. Most visions of the future now are dystopic nightmares like Mad Max, Blade Runner, the Maxtrix franchise and so forth.


While I think it unlikely that any of Lewis's SF will make it to the big screen, I think it would be an interesting challenge to try to recreate them in some form on the small one. They couldn't be set on Mars or Venus. Space exploration has forced us to place our other worlds in "galaxies far, far away." However, the idea of encountering an unfallen species does have interesting opportunities for us to do the sort of self-examination that is the hallmark of good science fiction. The idea is not without precedent. H. G. Wells did something similar to this in his work The Time Machine, a work that may have influenced Silent Planet. Humans who are a bad influence on other species has figured in many a Star Trek episode.

Perhaps someone or some group may wish to bring Lewis's science fiction to a wider audience through television. They might make an interesting cable series made to show that we can aspire to live up to higher ideals. Who knows? One day the utopic vision may be back in fashion.

What do you think?

Review of Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse

Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse by James L. Swanson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The book provided fascinating information on how both Lincoln and Jeff Davis went from human beings to the central characters in different mythologies.



Lincoln's myth began mere hours after his assasination as hundreds of people clamored to be present at his death bed. The myth increased exponentially as a result of the national mourning that took place in Washington and on the 10 city tour made by his remains and coffin.



Davis' journey took place over the long life he lived after his capture and imprisonment following the surrender of Lee's and Johnston's armies. He became a living symbol, indeed the inventor of, "The Lost Cause", the belief that even though the South had been defeated, it had been right in succeeding from the North, a belief that persists in various forms to this day.



Swanson conveys the moods, the emotions, the attitudes Americans had and have had about both men. He is at his best when he discusses why Lincoln and Davis's lives and deaths meant more to the people of their day than simply them as individuals. People invested in these two leaders all the griefs, sorrows, anguish, pride, and patriotism they had felt about their part in the Civil War. At times, though, he gets a bit repetitious as he fears we won't completely understand the importance of his subject. Still, this is a highly recommended book for Civil War buffs and also those who need to understand how the Civil War affect us even now.



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My latest read: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie

I just got through reading Sherman Alexie's collection of short stories entitled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. No where in the book did I read an account of the Lone Ranger and Tonto fistfighting in heaven or any other place.

I did read 22 interrelated stories that center on a collection of Native American characters who live or have lived on a reservation near Spokane, Washington. Most of the stories have little or no real plot to them. Instead, they present a near stream-of-consciousness telling of modern Native American life. Alienation and survival are the stories' prominent themes since most of the characters have trouble belonging to the world outside the reservation, and have even more trouble living on the reservation.

Dancing is one of the many motifs Alexie uses to show how his characters to survive and overcome their alienation. For example, the tale "Family Protrait" centers on dancing. The speaker says about his family:

Then there was music, scratched 45's and eight-track tapes. We turned the volume too high for the speakers, and the music was tinny and distorted. But we danced, until my oldest sister tore her only pair of nylons and wept violently. But we danced, until we shook dust down from the ceiling and chased bats out of the attic into the daylight. But we danced, in our mismatched clothes and broken shoes. I wrote my name in Magic Marker on my shoes, my first name on the left toe and my last name on the right toe, with my true name somewhere in between. But we danced, with empty stomachs and nothing for dinner except sleep. All night we lay awake with sweat on our backs and blisters on our soles. All night we fought waking nightmares until sleep came with nightmares of its own. I remember the nightmare about the thin man in a big hat who took the Indian children away from their parents. He came with scissors to cut hair and a locked box to hide all the amputated braids. But we dance, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards.

It was a dance.

Dancing provides an apt symbol representing both means of the individual identity and social cooperation necessary for survival. Added to those means is that of story-telling. One character named Thomas Builds-a-Fire is an unstoppable story teller. We read of Thomas that he:.

once held the reservation postmaster hostage for eight hours with the idea of a gunand had also threatened to make significant changes in the tribal vision.

Thomas had agreed to remain silent and did so for twenty years.

But recently Thomas had begun to make small noises, form syllables that contained more emotion and meaning than entire sentences from the BIA.

Thomas goes through a kafkaesque trial and is imprisoned to silence his stories which endanger the social order. There Thomas begins his stories anew telling them to his fellow inmates. Fortunately, Sherman Alexie has yet to suffer Thomas's fate, so far.

The book became the basis for the movie Smoke Signals for which Mr. Alexie wrote the screenplay. I have not seen the movie, but plan to do so as soon as is feasible. I enjoyed experiencing Sherman Alexie's point of view and recommend it to anyone wanting to gain new perspectives