Makine: Hitler: O'Hagan: James Wood

     It has been a long time since I last posted on this blog, and I have somewhat lost track of what I have been reading. I continue with "War and Peace" from time to time, and I recently discovered that Apple had synched my I-Phone to my I-Pad; so when I sit in the Metro going to the recording studio (I am back narrating books again) I can read another chapter on my phone. But still, there's a long way to go. The book I am currently recording is "1381: The Year of the Peasants' Revolt" by Juliet Barker. Fascinating--although she does write some long, long sentences that require considerable breath control, and long parenthetical inserts that separate subjects from verbs. All authors should try to read their work aloud and see how they fare...
     And just a few words about Hitler. Ian Kershaw wrote a huge three volume book about Hitler, and he has condensed it into one volume, which is still very long. I noted it as available as a download to my I-Pad from the DC Public Library and thought I would read at least part of it. I have skipped quite a bit, but I did read fairly thoroughly the early life and the rise to power. I could not help but compare Donald Trump to Hitler. Here was man who came to power without promulgating any substantive policy.  He merely preached the need to make Germany great again and inveighed against the Weimar politicians; those who had betrayed Germany at the end of WW1--the November criminals; and, of course, the Jews. And what Germany needed was a leader...guess who?
     Now Trump has nothing much resembling a policy--at least he puts forward very little in that respect. His aim is simply "To Make America Great Again," whatever that means, and his targets are immigrants and politicians. The basic message is "I will be a Leader." Just like Adolph.
     Two other things interested me. I did not know that there was a bomb attempt on Hitler's life shortly before the war broke out, and that it came within ten minutes of succeeding. A machine operator built a bomb with a timer. Very painstakingly, over several weeks, he hollowed out a pillar in a venue where Hitler was to speak and placed the bomb in it. Unfortunately, Hitler left earlier than the time the bomb was set to go off. It exploded and killed several people, and would surely have killed Hitler. Talk about the contingencies of history. And just one piece of trivia: occasionally Hitler's breath was so bad his visitors just had to back away from him. Enough...
     James Wood, who reviews books for The New Yorker, has put together in a short book a series of lectures he gave at a U.S. university (I forget which one). It is a very enjoyable read, especially for anyone interested in literary criticism and the role of the novel. It is called "The Nearest Thing to Life" and it is a blend of memoir and literary criticism. One review called it "a master-class on the connections between fiction and life." The first lecture or chapter is called "Why" and engages with the questions--
what is life, why are we here, and what is the role of the novel? The next two lectures are about the techniques of writers, "Noticing Everything" and "Seriously Noticing," and in these lectures he looks to examples from great literature. In the final lecture "Homelessness" he discusses those authors who leave their native countries and write in exile--sometimes in a language that they did not grow up with. James Wood himself is a Brit who has lived a great deal of his adult life in the United States, and he discusses his feelings about this in a way that has some resonance for me.
     In an earlier post, I said that I had given up on Andrew O'Hagan's book, "The Illuminations." But I went back to it and found it very impressive. Part of it is a howl against the campaign in Afghanistan, and the effect that an accidental tragedy, leading to a massacre of Afghani women and children, has on one of the leading characters. But the novel is essentially about relationships: mothers and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and the problems of growing old and senile: and in Afghanistan, the relationships between officers and men, and the soldiers among themselves. 
     But the best book I have read recently--apart from "The Last Chronicle of Barchester," which is ongoing, is "A Woman Loved," by Andrei Makine--a Russian who writes in French, and the English translation is above criticism--superb. There is a foreword by Francine Prose. The story is about Oleg, whom we meet first under the Russian Communist regime. He is fascinated by Catherine the Great and has written a screenplay that, after jumping the needed ideological hurdles, is actually filmed. We then follow his path through to the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the rise of the oligarchs, when he turns his obsession about Catherine into a schlocky TV series. And we flash back from time to time to his childhood and his father's experience in the gulag. 
     I can quote Ms. F Prose:
"What's remarkable is how much depth, how much complication--and how much history--Makine has packed into a novel about a man who only wants to make a film about a famous and notorious woman who claimed for herself the freedoms that so puzzle and intrigue--and elude--her smart, sympathetic, beleaguered cinematic biographer. And what stays with us is the intelligence and depth of feeling with which Makine has portrayed the victories and compromises that sustain the unlikely and inspiring union of art, life, and love."
     And if you read it, you will probably start looking for the best biography of Catherine The Great.
     Makine has also written several other novels: Dreams of my Russian Summer; A Life's Music; Brief Loves that Live Forever; The Life of an Unknown Man; and The Woman Who Waited. Next time I go to the Public Library I will get one of these.