Becoming Dr. Seuss by Brian Jay Jones

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

This was yet another of those books I picked up randomly off the new books shelf because it looked interesting. It was a good choice. 

Dr. Seuss presumably needs no introduction. Since 1937, his books - for kids but fun for grownups too - have been part of the American canon. I imagine even the most sheltered Fundies are aware of the subversive Cat in the Hat, and probably a few other characters. I would even go so far as to say that we of Gen X had our childhoods shaped by Seuss - and the Beginner Books imprint he pioneered. Although on a different level of reading, Seuss was my generation’s Harry Potter - and I would add that, like Millennials, our generation’s reading is partly responsible for the significant generation gap both generations have with many Boomers. 

Just to give a few examples, I grew up on The Lorax. Which, in a rational world, would be a thoroughly uncontroversial book. After all, natural resources ARE finite, and pollution DOES destroy things, and we should take action to conserve the earth. Except, here in 2019, one entire political party believes conservation is a liberal conspiracy, apparently. I cannot believe I live in such times. 

Likewise, The Sneetches shaped how I saw beliefs in racial and cultural superiority, and The Butter Battle Book brought “mutually assured destruction” to my mind at a young age. Looking back, in many ways, Dr. Seuss was shockingly “progressive” by the standards of our current age. 

This book is a fairly detailed biography, running in excess of 400 pages, plus extensive notes. It isn’t boring by any stretch, however. Brian Jay Jones hits the perfect balance between detail and narrative flow. Because Theodor Seuss Geisel lived a long and eventful life, there is a lot to tell. 

I’m not going to tell much of the story, because that is the point of the book, after all, and Jones is a far better biographer than I would be. There are, however, some interesting details that stood out. 

One is the progression that Geisel (and thus his pseudonym, Dr. Seuss) made over his lifetime. Giesel didn’t really hit it big as an author until the 1950s, when he was in his 40s, so he had quite a bit of a life before that. After a mediocre stint in college (he graduated but dropped out of grad school), he ended up working in advertising, while making a little on the side from his political cartoons. His whimsical drawings and verbal zingers kept him employed. During World War Two, he enlisted, and was paired with Frank Capra (and a few other names that would become big later: P. D. Eastman, Munro Leaf, as well as Chuck Jones and the usual suspects at the Warner Brothers animation studio) to produce propaganda films for the military. These films, the Private SNAFU series, are pretty dang funny, very Loony Tunes, and recognizably Seussian. (They are available on YouTube, if you want to check them out.) Geisel’s work on the documentary, Design For Death, would win him an Oscar. 

All this to get around to my main point on how Giesel changed over time. In his first book (And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street), he would use an unfortunate stereotype - which was also used in the propaganda films. His political cartoons, likewise, from his early era all too often use cheap jokes at the expense of the usual suspects of the time: African Americans, Asians, women, and children. These haven’t worn too well, as he would later admit. However, things started to change noticeably. Recently, one of his best political cartoons has been making the rounds of the internet:

As time went on, Geisel would become more consistently progressive in his politics. Although his books are not often overtly political (and are only “partisan” in an era when the very ideas of conservation or the common good are partisan issues), they do show his concern for the marginalized, for the environment, and for - dare I say it? - common sense. (More on the last one later.) There is a certain irony in the fact that Boomers bought Dr. Seuss’s books in vast numbers for their kids, not anticipating perhaps that they would undermine their own politics a generation later. 

Going back to near the beginning of the book, one interesting fact was that Geisel’s father, T. R., was a bit of an inventor of sorts (in addition to being, pre-Prohibition, a brewer.) He would, as the book puts it, solve simple tasks with “complicated-looking devices that would, to later eyes, appear...well, appropriately Seussian.

Also fun was the parallel between the early 2000s and another time when Americans did stupid stuff in reaction to European events. Anyone remember “Freedom Fries”? From that time when France urged caution in starting a couple of wars? (France was right, in case you hadn’t noticed…) Well, during World War One, the same nativism and xenophobia was turned against the Germans, and we had, rather than hamburgers, “Liberty Sandwiches.” For Geisel, as a German-American, he and his family received a good bit of prejudice during this time. 

Geisel had difficulty selling his first book, for quite a while. One of the common criticisms it received was that it had no moral. Furthermore, the narrator was not punished for making up a tall tale. Geisel complained about this, saying, “What’s wrong with kids having fun reading without being preached at?” This all sounds kind of familiar, from my wife’s Fundie days. And yes, Elsie Dinsmore does get mentioned in this book. 

On a related note, Geisel believed - and advocated for - a then-revolutionary idea: that children were humans, and smarter than they were given credit for. Thus, they hated being talked down to, and saw through stupidity and condescension. In Geisel’s view, children were to be talked to directly, as absolute equals. 

[Side note here: the whole thrust of the Patriarchy and Fundamentalist movements is to restore rigid hierarchies, including that of parents over children. Gothard in particular emphasized that - and it applied to adult children too…]

How about another weird fact? One that I didn’t know, believe it or not. Did you know that Dr. Seuss invented the word “nerd”? It’s true. The word was first used in If I Ran The Zoo. It referred to a grouchy imaginary animal, but the word took on a life of its own, and within a year made a Newsweek article on changing slang. 

There is a lot more in the book that I could have quoted. Dr. Seuss was certainly quotable, despite his shyness on a stage. I referenced The Butter Battle Book above, and there is a quote from him about that which I think bears repeating. There was a surprising amount of controversy over the book, which caught Geisel off guard. He particularly resented the accusation that he was anti-military. 

“I’m not anti-military. I’m just anti-crazy.”

And that is exactly how I feel. Like Geisel, I acknowledge the need in our world for the good guys to have access to force to oppose the Hitlers of the world. And I support our military. But I am anti-crazy, and would like us to use a lot better judgment in how we pick wars. (See “freedom fries” above…) 

One final thing chronologically: near the end of Geisel’s life, the San Diego Museum of Art presented an exhibition of his work, from the cartoons to the illustrations to the more “serious” art he painted. The critics were largely savage, claiming that what Dr. Seuss did was not real art. 

This is, to put it frankly, bullshit. 

It may not be “traditional” art, but it is certainly art. Take a look at any of the books. The drawings are at least as much of the fun as the words - probably more. And they took plenty of work to get right. 

Back in 2015, we took one of our regular vacations to the San Diego area, and went to see an exhibit on Dr. Seuss at the San Diego History Museum (it features local history, and Geisel lived in nearby La Jolla for the second half of his life.) Included were some of his paintings, as well as the whimsical “animal heads” that used real antlers and so on with stuffed versions of his creatures. (He had a collection of these in his home - proof of either weird taste or a good sense of humor.) 

 Wow, the kids are a lot bigger now...

 

One of the more typically "Seussian" of his works. 

 These two are definitely more unusual - and weren't seen until after Geisel's death. 

I think they are actually not bad - he specifically intended them as tributes to the modern artists they resemble.

Brian Jay Jones has also written biographies of Jim Henson and George Lucas, which I am inclined to read in the future. While this one was a largely positive portrayal, it did include some of the skeletons as well, so it wasn’t a straight-up hagiography. I thought Jones struck good balances throughout, making the book informative and interesting. 

Good Evening, Mrs. Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

Source of book: Borrowed from my wife.

My wife discovered the small British book publisher, Persephone Books, a few years back, when she was looking for her own copy of The Home-Maker, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, if my memory serves. Although it could have been Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. In any event, the publisher describes its goal as:

Persephone Books reprints forgotten twentieth century novels, short stories, cookery books and memoirs by (mostly) women writers. They appeal to the discerning reader who prefers books that are neither too literary nor too commercial, and are guaranteed to be readable, thought-provoking and impossible to forget. 

From the three I have read so far, I would say this is accurate. These books aren’t in the pantheon of classics, but aren’t exactly fluff either. They are interesting, and represent a different kind of literature than either genre boilerplates or the heavy and turgid literary novels which characterized much of the 20th Century. One might say that they fall in a traditionally disrespected category: women’s literature. For much of history, women were given little shot at literacy - that was for men only. This wasn’t universal, of course, and it started to crack in a serious way with the Feminist movement, which insisted that women were the equals of men - and should be educated accordingly. That said, with the explosion of literate women, the fusty old men who had controlled social standards felt they had to denigrate “novels” as less worthy than the old Greek and Roman “classics” (which, conveniently, were taught only to men.) This prejudice against the things women read - and write - continues into our own time, with “chick lit” incurring particular dismissal, even as male-oriented boilerplate books feature the same (or worse) imaginative and formulaic writing. 

Of the three I have read, I think that this one, a collection of short stories written by Mollie Panter-Downes during World War Two, features the best writing.

Mollie Panter-Downes, despite being British, is actually most associated with American institutions. For decades, Panter-Downes wrote for The New Yorker, in a variety of genres. Much of her writing was regular investigative journalism, reporting from Britain to an upper-middle-class American audience. Other pieces would fall into the category of non-fiction, but not exactly journalism, such as her “Letters from London” series. In addition to this, she occasionally contributed short stories. This particular book collects the 21 stories she wrote during the war, along with one of the Letters from London that serves as an introduction, more or less, to the themes and setting of the stories. (The author didn’t specifically intend that - the letter was written right after Britain declared war on Germany, and before any of the stories were written.) 

The stories are fairly short, and are self-contained. For the most part, they take place in a short period of time, in a single location, and involve a small number of characters - sometimes only one. The stories all focus on the Homefront - the people left behind as the soldiers left to fight in Africa, the Middle East, the Far East, and eventually Europe. The characters are, naturally, mostly women - the men went off to fight. There are two exceptions: the retired Major Marriott, desperate to return to battle; and Mark Goring, stuck in a desk job in London. 

For the most part, these are middle to upper-middle-class Brits - the kind that, before the war, had a few servants, but not necessarily a title or an estate. They are kind of the forgotten middle as far as the literature of the time went. The working poor had recently become a trendy topic in literature, while the upper crust retained its fascination. (Escapism has been a goal of literature for a long time - possibly since the dawn of language.) It seems plausible that Panter-Downes picked this slice of British society both because it was her own class, and because it was likely to appeal to the typical New Yorker reader of the time. 

As Panter-Downes notes in a few stories, however, this particular way of life was rapidly changing. After the war, the petit-bourgeoisie largely faded away, with only the wealthy being able to retain servants. 

In general, I found the writing to be good, the human portraits to be well drawn, and the psychological profiles of the effects of war and change and stress to be perceptive. I am an aficionado of the short story, and these were good ones. 

I won’t try to describe all the stories in this post, but figured it would be good to hit a few highlights. 

The first was in the preface, written by Gregory LeStage, and it was a fact I either didn’t know or had forgotten somehow: in the years 1939 through 1941, more British civilians were killed than were soldiers. The Battle of Britain took a heavy toll in lives as well as infrastructure. The homefront was in essence the warfront. It is difficult for an American in the 21st Century to really grasp this. There has been no war on our own soil (excluding Pearl Harbor) in a century and a half - and the mainland of the US hasn’t been under legitimate threat since, well, probably the War of 1812, more than 200 years ago. 

The collection starts off with a bank, with “Date With Romance,” featuring Mrs. Ramsay, a recurring character. Widowed, she meets an old friend for dinner - he apparently was interested in her back in the day. However, he seems to think of her as old now, and we find out eventually that he hopes to marry a far younger woman. Mrs. Ramsay’s poisonous thoughts are rapier sharp during and after the encounter, and make for a witty contrast to the mansplaining guy. 

Also razor sharp is the opening of “In Clover,” about a rather clueless and classist woman who takes in a lower-class family during the Blitz. The woman in charge of farming out the evacuees from London is described thus:

She had smiled as she spoke, the flashing and more than necessarily kind smile that she reserved for the lower orders, who hadn’t, don’t you know, had quite the advantages that we have. 

I also found “As the Fruitful Vine” intriguing. It is essentially a story of two sisters, the elder of which seems to have upstaged the younger. This becomes even more apparent when, with the war raging, the younger sister gets pregnant on her honeymoon, and everyone disapproves. The sibling dynamics are certainly interesting, but it is this passage that really caught my eye:

After a few days’ honeymoon, Philip had to rejoin his ship, and it was with the greatest astonishment that Lucy discovered in due course that she was going to have a baby. It seemed less like a marital than a botanical incident, the result of a chance brush between a bee and a flower: this discovery of motherhood ought to have been stirring, but again a big moment didn’t quite come off. Paternity would catch up with Philip somewhere in the West Indies or the Mediterranean or wherever Lucy’s startled letter reached him; his reply would reach her long after any emotions which she might have been feeling at the moment of writing his letter had passed. To be truthful, those emotions were not overpowering. It was difficult to work up emotion over a tender secret which had to be shouted to a bee who was now winging his way God knows where. Once more, Lucy felt, life had treated her cruelly.

There are several stories featuring the ladies’ sewing circles, all of which are amusing. Panter-Downes pokes gentle fun at the casual prejudices of the members. In one section, a discussion on what sort of pajamas the Greeks might wear, unexpectedly results in some bigotry being aired. 

Mrs. Twistle coughed gently again and remarked with implacable softness that the Greeks were very marvelous, no doubt, but in her opinion it was a pity that England had to have foreign allies monkeying about with her war. 

After it is pointed out to her that allies are, well, by definition, foreign, Mrs. Twistle kind of doubles down. 

“There’s no doubt, Mrs. Peters, that they’re a fine lot of men. It’s only that if I had my way, we’d have nothing to do with foreigners. We’re better off without them, though there are those in high places, I’m well aware, as don’t see eye to eye.” 

Hmm, this sounds more than a little bit like a lot of white Boomers I know. “I’m sure all those [immigrants, foreigners, African Americans, etc.] are fine people, but why can’t they just stay where they are?” For what it is worth, Mrs. Twistle considers Americans to be suspicious foreigners too. As with Americans - and Brits - today, the delusional dream of Empire casts a rosy glow and paints an illusion that things would be better if we could just go back to a day when foreigners knew their place in the hierarchy.

Mrs. Ramsay’s sewing circle reappears in later stories, in one of which, “Mrs. Ramsay felt that she was sitting in at a sewing bee of the Fates, all busy with shears and thread, snipping at a life here, twinning two strands with a knowing cackle there.” That’s a good line right there. 

Perhaps the most poignant story in the bunch is “Good-bye, My Love,” about a young couple. He is on brief leave, but then must leave her again. 

Language was inadequate, after all. One used the same words for a parting which might be fore years, which might end in death, as one did for an overnight business trip. She put her arms tightly round him and said, “Good-bye, my love.” 

The title story is rather interesting. “Mrs. Craven” is never given an actual name, for reasons which appear as the story progresses. The “she” from whose perspective the story is told, is the mistress of Mr. Craven, who is married with children. They go out to shows together, and always eat at Porters, where she is greeted with “Good evening, Mrs. Craven.” 

At first, this amuses them, but eventually, when the war starts, and he is given deployment orders, she realizes that she is, legally speaking, nobody. (Hence why she never gets a name.) He could be killed in battle, and she would have to wait for the official casualty list to find out. And what if he was just injured?

“Don’t think I’m being stupid and morbid,” she said, “but supposing anything happens. I’ve been worrying about that. You might be wounded or ill and I wouldn’t know.” She tried to laugh. “The War Office doesn’t have a service for sending telegrams to mistresses, does it?” 

It is a bit of a haunting story too, because there is no good ending to this relationship, no matter what happens. 

There are two stories that involve an elderly lady and her elderly servant. (Different characters in each.) In one, “This Flower, Safety,” the lady is terrified by any signs of the war, and keeps moving around to try to escape it. (And probably never does.) In the other, “Cut Down the Trees,” the roles are reversed. Mrs. Walsingham adjusts to the changes with aplomb, even hosting a Canadian regiment on her grounds. (The title comes because they cut a couple of trees down to fit their equipment.) Old Dossie, on the other hand, rages and fights against all change, trying to keep her employer from eating in casual clothes, and in the kitchen no less! When Mrs. Walsingham’s son visits, he is struck by both the changes, and the reactions to them. His mother explains:

“She’s an invaluable creature in lots of ways. Her trouble is that she hates adjusting to the war and she doesn’t like me to adjust, either. She has always refused to adjust to anything. I sometimes think that if there’s ever a social revolution in England, they’ll string Dossie up first before they bother about me.”

Speaking of social revolutions, in “Year of Decision,” one of the stories with a male protagonist, the wealthy couple each have difficulty adjusting. With no servants, they both have to learn how to keep a house themselves. The wife works herself into complete exhaustion, while the husband fantasizes about being able to fight in a real war, not just make important plans for it from behind a desk. 

War had differed from peace only in that one worked harder, smoked more, and was progressively more and more uncomfortable at home. But discomfort was hardly danger; except for dodging a few bombs in the blitz, his had been a remarkably safe war. It had taught him none of the stinging, salutary lessons that he had expected. Instead, he had picked up all sorts of curious, unlikely bits of information, such as how to make a bed, scour a greasy saucepan, and lay a breakfast table so that it did not too greatly resemble the haphazard design of the March Hare’s tea party. 

Times have indeed changed more than a bit. But that is part of the fun of this book. By turns humorous and poignant, it captures the ways that war and stress and trauma change us, and shines a light on the fact that those on the homefront experience war too. I rather enjoyed this book, and would like to seek out some of Panter-Downes’ other writings.  

The War That Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Source of book: Audiobook from the library.

This book is part of our not-particularly-systematic exploration of the Newbery Award and Honor books. It was an honor book in 2016. 

Sometimes, you are surprised by a book in a way you didn’t anticipate, and this was one of them. I believe this book is targeted more toward middle school kids rather than elementary, which makes sense, because it deals with some pretty heavy themes, and has a lot of darkness along with the light. My kids are pretty used to this sort of stuff, but your mileage may very. Sensitive younger kids might not deal well with the (all too realistic) physical and emotional abuse by a parent.

Here is the basic setup: Ada is a 10 year old girl who was born with a club foot. Because of her mother’s poverty, it was never treated. Instead, her mother, who never wanted children, and was furious at the fates when she was left widowed with two of them, viciously hates Ada, and imprisons her in their flat, not allowing her to speak to other people or go to school. Ada’s younger brother Jamie is “normal,” and is allowed to go to school. He is generally treated better than Ada - in fact, every fault in Jamie is punished against Ada - if he messes up, she spends the night under the sink. I’ll be blunt here: this is some pretty rough abuse in this book. I would say it was gratuitous, except that I have too much professional experience with abusive parents. I have seen worse. Definitely worse. And, as in real life, the physical abuse is less damaging than the psychological abuse.

So, World War Two breaks out, and London parents are encouraged to send their children to the countryside, so that they won’t get bombed by the Germans in the Battle of Britain. Mam is willing to let Jaime go, but insists that Ada stay. She has other ideas, however, and sneaks out with Jaime. The two of them are taken by train to a village in Cornwall, where nobody wants them - they are too dirty and ratty and unpromising.

The local head of the Women’s Volunteer Service decides to essentially force the two of them on Susan Smith, a local woman who has a...questionable reputation. To our modern minds, it isn’t too hard to figure out Susan’s issues, but back then, she described herself as “not a nice person,” and “not equipped to care for children.” As the story progresses, we learn her history, and why she is how she is. And (not much of a spoiler), she actually is a nice person - she’s more of a non-conventional person with some serious demons of her own to address.

As you might imagine, this situation is a disappointment to Jamie - the favorite child - and heaven on earth to Ada, who has never experienced tolerance, let alone love, before in her life. For her, the war is literally a lifesaver, allowing her to escape abuse and find a place for herself in the world - and indeed experience hope for the first time.

There is more, of course, and I risk spoilers if I were to get into the details too far. But I do want to address the subtext a bit, because I think it is fascinating.

Susan Smith, in addition to sharing a coincidental last name with Ada and Jamie, has a past. And not just any old past.

She is a lesbian, even though the book doesn’t explicitly spell that out. Anyone with a bit of perception can figure it out. (And that is exactly why a good number of Fundie Mommy Bloggers have their panties in an absolute knot about this book. Seriously, I Googled it, and a whole bunch came up before the more reasonable reviews of the book.)

The book brings this out gradually, and never explicitly. Susan mentions that she hasn’t been the same since her best friend (and housemate) Becky died three years ago. They essentially had (it is strongly implied) a “Boston Marriage.” Gradually, we learn that Susan was the daughter of a clergyman, who disowned her after she went to college and “changed,” and met Becky. Susan also mentions that she doesn’t actually dislike children, but since she wasn’t interested in marrying a man...she assumed she wouldn’t have them. It’s easy to read between the lines.

As it turns out, Susan is an excellent foil for Mam. If you think about it, Mam was quite interested in marrying a man, but didn’t want children. Her husband (as it turns out) called her “unnatural” and somehow either convinced or raped her into having kids. (We never find out for sure.) When he was killed in an accident, she was left with children she never wanted, crushing poverty, and no perceived future. That she took her rage at the universe out on Ada is sad and horrifying, but not that surprising. So there you have an interesting contrast: Susan wants kids but not a man, Mam wants a man but not kids. Again, this is pretty dang realistic - something the Fundies of my background aren’t really interested in acknowledging or understanding.

In fact, the Fundie Mommy Bloggers with their panties in a wad were almost equally horrified at both of these problems. A lesbian was a good parent? Horrors! A heterosexual woman didn’t fit the stereotype of wanting to be a mother more than anything in the world? That can’t possibly be true! Real women are perfectly willing - nay, eager! - to make babies the centerpiece of their lives and eschew a career and a life and a personality to do so. That’s God’s Perfect Plan for People With Vaginas™! So yes, totally subversive - and also totally realistic in my experience. People don’t fit into the neat little boxes at all.

It gets even worse! The author weaves a theme through the book which points toward tolerance - nay embrace - of innate differences and diversity which definitely subverts the Fundie insistence on conformity and rigid societal and gender roles.

Ada has her clubfoot - which is a congenital defect, correctable by proper treatment. But her mother blames Ada - it is the result of her moral failings somehow. (I can’t help but think of the Gospel of John, chapter 9...the religious establishment is SO determined to find a cause for non-conformity in the sinfulness of the person or parents…) But of course, we know (thanks to modern understandings of medicine and genetics) that neither Ada nor her parents are to blame for this - it is how she was born, and, while she is too old to ever be “fixed” completely, she can improve. But more than that: she is entitled to her own freedom, her own self determination, and her chance to be the best she can be. Thus, when her mother takes away her crutches, and attempts to reduce her to imprisonment in a room again, we know this is wrong, whatever the old superstitions may tell us. We instinctively know that Ada is entitled to live her own best life - even if her foot is never perfect. We cheer for her as she learns to compensate for her deficits and learns to ride a horse. We applaud as she finds her mobility and her independence. We cheer as she learns to read despite the way her mother has told everyone (including her) that she is mentally deficient.

There is more, though. Jamie may be the “favorite” child - although it turns out Mam doesn’t really love him either - she just uses him as a way to express her hatred for Ada - but he has his own dark secret. He is left handed. This causes his teacher to literally tie his left hand to the desk until it rubs raw. Susan flips out, and makes sure that doesn’t happen again. The teacher repeats the “traditional” line: left handedness was considered a sign of the Devil. Literally. Actually, let’s explore that one. Have you ever heard the term “sinister”? What does that term mean, and where did it come from? Believe it or not, “sinister” literally comes from the idea of left handedness. It is the opposite of “dexter” - the root of dexterity and dextrous. To be left handed was to be evil - because difference from the majority is evil, right? Right?

My mother is left handed, and she too grew up in a time when they used abusive methods to try to force left handed children into being right handed - or at least functioning as right handed persons in public. I heard the stories from her as a kid. On the plus side, she can kind of write slowly with her right hand. But she realized that she was left handed, and uses that hand exclusively for writing now. There was nothing evil about how she was born - and indeed created by God - she was just different.

This is ultimately the problem that Fundies and Evangelicals (my former religious tribe) keep running up against in the whole discussion of sexuality.

Reality doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your dogma. Particularly if it is the result of millennia of belief in the idea of female inferiority to males (perhaps a future post…) Ultimately, one has to either make adjustments to reflect new knowledge and new understandings - or one must (as one can see with the Taliban or the Saudi government) engage in increasing brutality to exterminate anyone who fails or refuses to conform to dogma.

A belief that left handed people had the sign of the Devil - and the endless attempts to force them into righthandedness - didn’t eliminate left handed people. It just caused them thoroughly unnecessary pain and trauma. And allowed the majority to experience the masturbatory pleasure of self-righteousness about how they were born “normal.”

If you want to understand how Fundies/Evangelicals are catastrophically losing the battle for hearts and minds over sexuality in general, this is a good place to start. They are bloodying themselves against reality, over and over again. I guess they can’t feel the pain because they are so intent on the pleasure their self-righteous spiritual masturbation gives them. (Although I suspect some of them are trying to drown out their own sexuality…) It isn’t hard to see the dogmatic teacher, willing to torture a child to make him conform to righthandedness in those who casually and flippantly decide to decree celibacy for all who are outside the majority. There is no limit to the pain and torture they will inflict on others, as they are smug in their “normalcy.”

There are other interesting facets to this book: the horrors and terror of war. The obvious connection of the Nazis - who tried to exterminate LGBTQ people along with ethnic and racial minorities as they devastated anyone who stood in their way - including British civilians. The exploration of grief, depression, and PTSD. Susan’s grief and recurring clinical depression (although that term isn’t used) corresponds well to Ada’s PTSD resulting from her abuse. Bradley handles these issues with an age-appropriate touch - while never actually naming them. After all, a person in 1939 wouldn’t have our own knowledge and terminology, but would certainly have experienced these universally human responses to trauma and abuse.

This book was a bit darker and heavier than I expected, but I think it was a good one for my kids. (And they can definitely handle this stuff - we have listened to and discussed plenty of darker and heavier books.) I can see why this book panicked Fundies: it directly challenges the idea that religious dogma justifies hatred and persecution of non-conforming human beings. For the exact same reason, I believe it was a good one for my children to experience - and I recommend it for other parents who want to explain these issues to their children. It is an empathetic and well written introduction to the concepts of non-conformity, superstition, and human thriving. It also is optimistic about the possibility of positive change, even as it acknowledges that some people - like Mam - are unable or unwilling to show basic human decency. And the best way to deal with those people is to stop them from harming others, and let them destroy themselves with their own hatred if they insist on doing so. And, of course, to rescue the victims of abusers (and abusive religions) and help them to thrive.

I can’t help but suspect that at least some of these self-righteous Fundie Mommy Bloggers who have their panties in a wad over this book will turn out to have LGBTQ children of their own. It will be (darkly) interesting to see how they respond. When it is your kid, shit gets real, and you can’t just enjoy your maturbatory fantasy that somehow you did everything “right” and your kids turned out cis-het, thus giving proof of your righteousness. No longer can they really ask “did my kid sin or did I sin?” without any personal consequence. At some point, they are going to have to choose their future. Will they re-evaluate their dogma? Or will they choose, like Mam, to alienate their own flesh and blood, and live estranged and without the love they could have embraced. I have seen it go both ways, personally and professionally.

Read this book. Discuss it with your kids. Choose love and not abuse. And embrace the spectrum of humanity that God (or Nature if you prefer) has created - seek to help others thrive rather than force them into your dogmatic view of conformity.

La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith

Source of book: Audiobook my wife found at a library sale

My kids have been a fan of Alexander McCall Smith for quite a few years now, after my wife introduced them to the Mma. Ramotswe series. McCall Smith (that’s his full surname) is a prolific writer, but seems to hit a note of thoughtfulness and nuance with most of his books, despite writing several each year. He has at least three series going right now, in addition to the stand-alone novels. 

 

 

This book is one of the later, a novel unrelated to anything else he wrote. It is set mostly in the years of World War Two, in rural England.

The title character, La (short for Lavender), is a young British woman who ends up playing a rather unremarkable role in the war effort. We meet her first in a retrospective by her stepsons, who visit her cottage in Suffolk, where most of the events take place. She is still known, years after her death, for her orchestra.

The book then shifts to La’s earlier years. She went to Cambridge (attending an all-girls college), made a disastrous marriage which ends when his mistress in France comes to light, and is gifted the cottage and an income by her former in-laws (who are embarrassed by their son.) He dies soon after, leaving her with a significant fortune. When the war starts, she searches for some volunteer work. However, as she is older and widowed, intellectually stimulating jobs are unavailable, and she ends up tending chickens in the neighborhood near her cottage. After meeting the commander at the local air base, he and she decided to found a village orchestra - to include service members looking for a diversion. Her orchestra plays through the end of the war, disbanding afterward. They briefly re-form during the Cuban Missile Crisis, causing someone to quip that they have saved the world twice.

The other main character is Felix, an ostensibly Polish airman, who joins the RAF after the fall of Poland. In reality, he has a more complex history, being the child of German parents, although he was raised in Poland from age eight onward. La and Felix have serious chemistry, but his reserve and her loyalty to country prevent them from sharing their feelings. It is hinted in the prologue that they connect years after the war, after he has had children and a failed marriage of his own.

McCall Smith has a long history with music. He founded the “Really Terrible Orchestra,” a group of enthusiastic amateurs who make music for the joy of it (and the entertainment of the audience, I am given to understand.) He plays contrabassoon, which may well say something about his personality. He also established an opera house and training center in Botswana, a country that he spent a number of years in, teaching law.

This book is all about McCall Smith’s belief in the healing power of music. I must agree. One of the things about making classical music professionally is that you connect with people from around the world. Even our little hometown orchestra has had players from around the world join us - and that is even before you get to the soloists. I have shared stands with violinists from Russia, the Ukraine, Iran, Romania, Japan, Cypress, and Spain over the years (if memory serves), and that’s just the ones I have had the chance to sit with. Music is a universal language, and it is difficult to see someone as “the enemy” after you have bonded over a Mozart opera, or a Beethoven symphony.

McCall Smith is also correct that what we fight to preserve (in a just war) isn’t merely our home or our tribe. We fight to preserve all that is transcendent and good in the world. To reduce ourselves to the idea of “kill the other people” is to lose the war, to become as vicious and animalistic as the Nazis, or any other genocidal nationalist movement. One of my Symphony colleagues had a bumper sticker: “Less Violence, More Violins.” I couldn’t agree more. (Although even as a violinist, I’d be happy with a few winds, brass, and percussion too.) Music - and the arts generally - represent our aspiration to transcend, to find common ground and meaning with the rest of humanity, and to put our energy and creativity toward beauty, rather than hate.

In general, I thought that La’s Orchestra Saves the World lacked the depth of character that you find in some of his other books - but that might be in part because it is a single book, and you don’t get to see characters unfold across a range of plots and circumstances. The book does showcase McCall Smith’s usual ethical nuances and dilemmas. Is it right to marry someone who you don’t exactly love? How should one respond to betrayal? Should you turn someone in, even if you love them, if you think they might be a spy? What if they turn out to be innocent, but suffer anyway? How do you deal with bigoted neighbors? This is McCall Smith’s best trait, is in his acknowledgement of nuance, and his gentle and non-judgmental probing of the shades of grey.

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Previous posts about Alexander McCall Smith books:

#1 Ladies Detective Agency series

The Tears of the Giraffe (#2 in the series)

Morality for Beautiful Girls (#3 in the series)

The Kalahari Typing School For Men (#4 in the series)

The Full Cupboard of Life (#5 in the series)

Blue Shoes And Happiness (#7 in the series)

Sunday Philosophy Club series

The Sunday Philosophy Club

When Books Went to War by Molly Manning

Source of book: I own this.

My wife was given this book by one of her family members. It looked interesting, so I decided to read it too.

In many ways, World War Two is the defining moment of the 20th Century. It was the last gasp of nationalism as a justification for war in Western Europe - really, the last strong assertion of 19th Century political philosophy, and the final fall of dictatorship in that region. True, it would live on in the nationalistic dictatorships of the USSR for another 50ish years, but Germany and Italy would transition to constitutional democracies thereafter, and Western Europe would enjoy an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity.

I have written before about how similar Nazism and Communism are to each other. Both embody the idea of a nationalistic utopia attainable by totalitarianism and the rejection of globalist ideals - and ideas. In both cases, it was deemed necessary to purge the nation of “un-German” or “un-Soviet” books. This idea of ideological (and usually racial) “purity” is central to all totalitarian systems, including religious ones.

Thus, in 1933, after the Nazis took over German, mass book burnings took place. It is estimated that over 100 million books were destroyed. That many of the books deemed unacceptable were written by Jews was not coincidental. The parallel with Communism is likewise unmistakeable. Ideological purity demands the revocation of freedom of speech and freedom of thought. I will also mention that the cult group I spent my teens in recommended burning of certain books - and toys - that were deemed too evil to exist. (Such as, to name one author, J.R.R. Tolkien.) The totalitarian instinct is the same however it is expressed. 

 History is important...

When it became apparent that the United States would enter the war, certain visionary individuals realized that the war was not just one fought by weapons and bloodshed. It was, at its core, a war about ideas. As the Council on Books in Wartime - the organization founded to provide reading material to US soldiers - noted in an essay kicking off their effort, the fighting wasn’t just taking place on the field, but in the realm of ideas. They correctly noted that the single most destructive weapon in the war wasn’t a bomb, it was Mein Kampf. That book caused an entire nation - an educated nation no less - to burn the great books. And that book furthermore caused millions of otherwise decent people to turn on their countrymen and viciously exterminate millions.

The types of books the Nazis destroyed are interesting. Goebbels specifically targeted books deemed “progressive,” singling out books about pacifism, socialism, reform, and sexual freedom. Is it any surprise that today’s right, which tolerates - even embraces - open Nazi slogans and symbols wishes to target these same ideas? One of the startling things about reading the Nazi propaganda is just how similar it is to the “traditional values” propaganda today - the bullcrap the Culture Wars people keep peddling. Return to the glory days of the past. Racial and cultural purity. Women belong in their place and need to have more babies so that the “foreigners” don’t out reproduce them. Stop feeding the inferior races and classes. And so on. Nothing has changed - this poison is back with a vengeance right now.

And so it was back then. In the days before the war, there were a surprising number of Americans who were sympathetic to Nazi ideals. (Not least of which was the KKK - which today likewise is in sympathy with neo-Nazism.) White Supremacy was pretty open in society back in the 1930s and 1940s. As Selden Menefee’s book (and later radio dramatization) noted, “large segments of the population are more interested in keeping the Negro in his place than in keeping Hitler and Tojo in their places. The resulting dissention must be very gratifying to Dr. Goebbels.” In another telling segment, a Southern politician tells Menefee that there is no “racial question.” “There is white supremacy, and there always will be white supremacy. We have no patience with fellas in Washington, with their anti-lynching bills, their anti-poll-tax bills, and their anti-discrimination clauses in war contracts.” Again, it has been disturbing to see this basic idea raise its head - and come to power again.

Even some of those who weren’t openly pro-Nazi instead adopted isolationist ideas. The US should just stay out, and look out for its own interests first and last. (Sound familiar?) Men like Wendell Wilkie argued the opposite, that countries need to cooperate with each other in order to achieve lasting peace and mutual prosperity. (In other words, a more globalist view. I am shocked that, after a half century of relative peace, this idea is controversial. Back even a decade ago, conservative politicians at least agreed that mutual trade relations helped support a peaceful world. Make profit, not war, right?)

To counter these poisonous ideas which very nearly destroyed free society 75 years ago, a group of people set out to make sure that the fighting men of the US military had free access to the world of ideas - particularly those which the Nazis deplored. And they succeeded in an amazing way. Furthermore, these idealists hoped to counteract the forces of White Supremacy in our own country. When Books Went to War tells this story.

The story is pretty compelling. There certainly was a demand for books by the soldiers. The war (as with most modern wars) consisted of hours of waiting punctuated by moments of terror and chaos. Those long hours needed to be filled by something other than thinking about dying or killing, and books were the perfect solution. So books needed to be provided.

There were two main phases of the effort. The first was a volunteer collection of books from private individuals. Millions of books were donated and sent to the military units. This was both good and inadequate. The books filled a need for a while, but they worked best at training camps and headquarters - not so well in the field. First, most books at the time were larger hardbacks. They were difficult to carry, heavy, bulky, and didn’t stand up to combat well. Eventually, it became clear that more was needed.

With that in mind, the Council convinced Congress to appropriate funds, and the major publishers to provide books at a very low cost, and the Armed Services Edition series was created. Eventually, millions of copies of over 1300 titles were distributed in light, compact, durable paperbacks to the troops.

Titles were carefully selected to represent a broad range of topics, taste, and genre. Poetry, westerns, classics, non-fiction, bestsellers, and more were all part of the series. Care was taken to find titles that were in demand, and that the soldiers enjoyed.

One interesting and gratifying result of this program was that many soldiers who were not readers before the war became addicted to reading. There wasn’t much else to fill the time, and peer pressure also helped encourage everyone to read. As a result, the men who came back from the front were generally better read and informed than they would have been otherwise, and an entire generation discovered literate reading.

[Side note: unfortunately, this effect failed to take hold in subsequent generations. The Baby Boomers were the first television generation, and even today, they are the generation least likely to have read a book in the last year, to have read a book since college, and so on. Millennials are actually more likely to be readers.]

There were some interesting books among the many titles. Perhaps the most beloved was A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. Also popular for nostalgic reasons was Chicken Every Sunday by Rosemary Taylor. I might have to seek that one out. Also notable was The Great Gatsby, which had been languishing in obscurity prior to the ASE program, but became wildly popular after it was “discovered” by the soldiers. I also have a fondness for the very first ASE book: The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N by Leo Rosten (originally under the pseudonym Leonard Q. Ross), one of my favorite humorous books - and one that humanized immigrants to me in a very real way.

There were some hiccups, however, in book selection. And, as is always the case when it comes to book controversies, the challenges came from the usual suspects: politics and religion.

On the politics side, the Republicans, horrified at the idea that Roosevelt might win a fourth term, snuck a bill through that essentially prohibited books with political ideas from being part of the ASE program. This was part of the greater fight over voting by soldiers - since most of them supported Roosevelt, active efforts were made to suppress their votes or influence their opinions in one direction or another. In what has to be one of the most impressive counteroffensives, libraries, publishers, and the armed forces leadership all pushed back against the bill. As the Council chairman at the time, Archibald Ogden, said, given the restrictions, all they would be able to publish was the Bobbsey Twins and Elsie Dinsmore. (That last one is darkly hilarious in retrospect. The Elsie Dinsmore books were super popular in the most Fundie homeschooling circles, of course. But they are far from free of politics. Rather, they are deeply racist and authoritarian. As in, if they are good Christians, black people will get to be white in heaven level racist. As in obey your abusive father and marry a man twice your age authoritarian.)

Fortunately, this counter effort was successful, resulting in the repeal of the bill. If anything, the Republican effort at suppression of political ideas backfired, particularly after it came to light that a German professor had predicted back in the 1930s that the Americans would ban their own books - the Nazis wouldn’t have to do it.

The other threat came from religion, specifically in the form of moralizers worrying about sexual content in some of the books. Some of these were not particularly high art, such as Forever Amber, a pulp bodice ripper. But the other book that came in for special censure was Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith, which told of an interracial relationship. Both books were at one time banned by the USPS - until Eleanor Roosevelt (rapidly becoming one of my heroes…) insisted the bans be lifted. In addition, the city of Boston banned them. Just in case you wondered where the phrase “banned in Boston” came from. Ogden stood firm on the subject, armed with the knowledge that the servicemen were on his side. He quoted one infantryman’s letter as follows:

“Pay no attention, absolutely no attention, to whatever organization tries to influence your selection of books. If the legion of decency approaches you, please leer at them in your most offensive manner, and tell them to stuff it.”

And the books that were challenged sold - as they generally tend to after an attempt to ban them. Ogden quipped, “It’s beginning to look as if all an author has to do to get into the armed forces library is to be banned in Boston.” Needless to say, this censorship attempt failed rather dramatically.

There was one issue, however, that did cause great consternation and loud complaints on the part of the soldiers. Occasionally, something would go wrong, and a book would turn up missing pages. I feel the pain, believe me. Nothing could be worse than getting partway through a book and not being able to finish it. Such mistakes were corrected, and soldiers which had an issue were given replacements.

The book concludes with some interesting information about the aftermath of the war. One of the key pieces of post-war legislation was the G.I. Bill, which provided free education to (most) veterans. Combined with the new-found love for books that the returning soldiers had and a thirst for knowledge (to the point where younger students complained they were wrecking the grading curve), the G. I. Bill led to a boom in skilled and educated workers in the 1950s - surely one of the contributing factors to the economic boom which ensued.

That said, the author correctly notes that not everyone was included. Because of segregated schools, African Americans did not have much in the way of opportunities to take advantage of the bill. Thus, racial inequality was increased. Likewise, women were not just ineligible, they were actively pushed out of the workforce to make way for the men.

Perhaps the best lesson to draw from this, though, is that investments in education and literacy pay dividends. Again, I am shocked that this is even controversial these days, and that state universities continually have to fight for adequate funding. But perhaps this too is a symptom of what ails the Boomers. Not valuing books much themselves, and benefiting from the prosperity the previous generation created, they haven’t been eager to pare back their own lifestyles to invest in the the Millennials, preferring to whine about how bad the kids all are. But, if they took a good hard look at the past, they might note that making America great requires an educated public, skilled workers, and investment of the public resources to make that happen.

It is mostly coincidence that I happened to finish this book at the beginning of Banned Books Week. But it fits.

The pattern of totalitarian systems of any age has been to suppress knowledge, eliminate dissent, and burn or ban books. In the war of ideas, knowledge is key - and empathy too. The best defense against the onslaught of fake news and hatemongering is real knowledge, real facts, and the ability to empathize with people outside the tribe. Books have always been crucial in this battle of ideas. Unlike clickbait articles or 140 character sound bites, books allow a bigger picture to be seen, people to be fully humanized, and ideas to be fully developed. Infowars and Stormfront are the Mein Kampf of our time, and the ideas haven’t really changed. They have just been re-packaged. One of the things that gives me optimism for the future is that younger people are more likely to be readers.

As this book shows, it isn’t just enough to have freedom to read. We must actually read, or we are missing the point. There is much for all of us to learn, and access to great ideas has never been easier. We owe it to ourselves, to others, and to our children to continue to learn and explore, and cultivate a love of knowledge, wisdom, and learning in our children.

The Irregulars by Jennet Conant

Source of book: I own this.

Did you know that before he was a beloved children’s author known for subversive and quirky books that independent-spirited kids have loved for decades, Roald Dahl was a British spy? And not only was he a spook, but he spied on the United States on behalf of Britain?

Neither did I.

But it is true. Dahl was injured in an airplane crash while part of the RAF early in World War II, and was assigned to the British Embassy in Washington D.C. as part of a public relations campaign in support of the Lend Lease program. While he was touring and telling his stories (and writing the famous Disney wartime propaganda book, The Gremlins), he was recruited by the British Security Coordination (BSC), a thinly disguised spy agency headed by Canadian William Stephenson.

Dahl ran with the social set in DC, and spent time with the Roosevelts and other politicians, newspaperman Charles Edward Marsh (who astonishingly does not even have a Wikipedia page, despite his influence which rivaled William Randolph Hearst), actors, and a plethora of socialites in and around Washington. His job was two-fold. First, he was to keep his ears open for interesting information - and there is evidence he passed along plenty of that. His second was to engage in counter-espionage - particularly by countering the narrative of the “American First” elements and other Nazi-sympathetic groups. It was interesting to read of the BSC from the other side: I had already read Winston Churchill’s World War II series, and he mentioned the work done through official and unofficial channels, but this gave a better “on the ground” view.

Reconstructing this story was not terribly easy, as good spies don’t leave behind incriminating evidence, and their own stories of what they did are not, shall we say, likely to be the most reliable. However, Ms. Conant pulls from a variety of sources to reconstruct a good deal of what happened from what Dahl was allowed to write down and what others in the business had to say afterward.

Dahl was hardly the only literary figure. Noel Coward worked in the same agency. Ian Fleming (of James Bond fame) worked fairly closely with Dahl. There were a number of other names that I recognized, both British and American. The line between friend and foe was a bit fine, particularly because Roosevelt was generally on the side of the British interests, and encouraged the BSC. Likewise, the official diplomats tended to hate the spooks, and tried to undermine them. It is rather fascinating stuff. 

The other characters in this book are interesting as well, from author-turned-congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce to actor Gregory Powers. Ms. Conant takes time to explore the lives of many of the close associates of Dahl, and how they fit into the political and social structure of the time. 

 Dahl and Hemingway

Also of particular interest to me, with my love for aviation and knowledge of the history of the airlines was the negotiations between the British and the Americans over the future of commercial aviation. Long before the war ended, the two bickered over the use of airfields built by each party around the world, whether commercial aviation should be a monopoly or a free for all. Complicating this was the fact that Pan Am was politically powerful, and the Brits were probably right that the negotiations were largely dictated by corporate lobbyists.

A few observations from this book: if anything, politics is even dirtier than spy work. Good lord, the skulduggery. I felt like taking a bath after reading some of this stuff. Also, anyone who tells you sexual mores are worse now hasn’t really read much history. Our current president would have fit right in with the 1940s culture, where rich men could marry and discard women at will, harassment was accepted as a matter of course, and nobody blinked at the history of abortions beautiful women had to hid their affairs. Pretty sordid stuff, and a reminder that in matters of morals, the only question that really mattered (and to a large degree still matters) is how much money and power you have. A star really could get away with just about anything.

There are also some outstanding quotes in this book, that are worth it even if they weren’t part of a larger narrative.

Lord Mountbatten’s distant nephew, Ivar Bryce, was a friend of Dahl’s, and not the most reputable one either. Bryce was born into wealth, and never really had to grow up. Mountbatten once said of him:

“It’s terrible, the advantages he’s had to overcome.”

David Ogilvy was another young spook who figures prominently in this story. He spent time working with George Gallup, who was essentially inventing the art of polling at the time, and later observed about research:

“There is no great trick to doing research. The problem is to get people to use it - particularly when the research reveals that you have been making mistakes. Most people have a tendency to use research as a drunkard uses a lamppost - for support, not for illumination.”

Isn’t THAT the truth.

Finally, there is one rather chilling and prescient passage. Stephenson believed that Americans were easily duped, and that therefore, he had to do his best to dupe them better than the opposition. To this effect, he employed some pretty ludicrous propaganda, including astrologers to predict Hitler’s fall. As he said about it later:

“It is unlikely that any propagandist would seriously attempt to influence politically the people of England, say, or France through the medium of astrological predictions. Yet in the United States this was done with effective if limited results.”

This is a lesson that was apparently not lost on certain foreign powers in the runup to our last election. I found I had seriously overestimated the ability of my countrymen to identify obvious falsehoods and fake news, but so many preferred to believe propaganda that supported their political preferences.

This is a fascinating look at a complex man, interesting times, and a lesser-known facet of a famous conflict.