The last two I've finished are The Guns of August and The Sleepwalkers. Onto The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front.

Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite (Edward Behr, 1991), about the Ceausescu regime.

Ceausescu is here portrayed, at least in his younger years, as somewhat similar to Mussolini, as violent and ill-tempered, drawn to politics more out of a desire for action than out of any conviction. He is described by people who knew him as intellectually inferior, lacking any ideas of his own, and totally devoid of humour. It would probably be sensible to take these reports with some reservation, considering this is written directly after the leader's ousting, and people are likely taking every chance to vent. Also, the removal of Ceausescu appears to have been very much an intra-party coup, long in the making - Ion Iliescu, who became the first "democratic" leader, had as a member of the Youth League (according to this book) been an enthusiastic and highly effective student inquisitor in his university.

The book is annoyingly inconsistent in its footnoting. One example is the highly damning claim that the Communist Party in the early years made use of several ex-Iron Guardsmen as enforcers, particularly during the election of 1946. This is claimed to have been so well known that people made jokes about it, so perhaps it's easy to verify from somewhere else, but that doesn't really matter, if the claim is not sourced it's not very useful.

Because of Romania's status as a "rogue state" in the context of world communism, Ceausescu was considered "the good communist" by several Western politicans (a fact highly criticized by Behr). This is quite hilarious, since although there is almost nothing, no matter how abhorrent, that tankies will not defend, I have to this day not found anyone speaking in favour of Ceausescu.

This book unfortunately, although it spends relatively little time on the issue, follows the typical dubious and essentializing road of trying to trace the nature of the communist regime in the political history of the country, which aside from being simply ignorant of concrete realities (how does this explain why the two Koreas are so different? or Taiwan and PRC?) has the implication that some countries are practically fated to become corrupt and dictatorial, and is at the very same time odiously self-congratulatory when coming from a western liberal perspective. Behr also has this old-school-historian habit of displaying his worldliness by throwing in observations of aspects of national character appearing in certain personages, which are amusing and intriguing at first sight but when looked at closely don't really contain much - what exactly does it mean to be "aggressively English", as the author says of the British-born Romanian queen Marie?

Kiss the Hand You Cannot Bite is a breeze to read. I plowed through almost all 240 pages in two days, which is very unusual for a historical work - even though this one is journalistic and not academic. I am often suspicious of reportage works and popular history because I find they tend to get preoccupied with weekly-mag type details which I don't care about at all. This book is definitely the right way to do it.

Started Cocaine Nights a few days ago. Been reading it on and off, in between bits of baseball and music binging and whatnot. So far there's not much cocaine in it. Which is fine! Have never been into the stuff. But I expected a little more excess right out of the gate, with a title like that.

DaveA wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:49 pm Started Cocaine Nights a few days ago. Been reading it on and off, in between bits of baseball and music binging and whatnot. So far there's not much cocaine in it. Which is fine! Have never been into the stuff. But I expected a little more excess right out of the gate, with a title like that.

Ballard frequently evoked excess, but always in his spare, dead way. I remember loving that book when I read it at university, and being very obnoxious to a guy who wrote an unenthusiastic review of it in one of the student papers, which I regret. Never saw him again until a gig a few years ago; I think he recognised me. He looked away, and I remembered what a complete knob I was. Onward!

Finished ‘The Turn of the Screw’. Not sure I liked it, and I did not catch much of a chill while reading it, but it is lingering in my imagination a few days afterwards.I eventually tuned into the book’s convoluted style.

For many years, I’d say of Henry James that he’s obviously great but that I don’t care for him. But it seems like everyone has the same opinion of him!

Does anyone actually *like* James, or is he still in the canon because of inertia?

A friend with impeccable taste told me I picked the wrong book to experience James’s style. He pointed me towards ‘Portrait of a Lady’. I’m in no rush to read it.

Henry James was close friends with Roger Louis Stevenson, which interests me, as I think of Stevenson’s writing as being very clear, direct, and immediately enjoyable.

sparky wrote: Wed Oct 27, 2021 6:37 am

DaveA wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 2:49 pm Started Cocaine Nights a few days ago. Been reading it on and off, in between bits of baseball and music binging and whatnot. So far there's not much cocaine in it. Which is fine! Have never been into the stuff. But I expected a little more excess right out of the gate, with a title like that.

Ballard frequently evoked excess, but always in his spare, dead way.

I find the prose rich in detail and the diction way above average. Where it might seem "spare" is in his somewhat detached tone. He immerses you into the world of appearances of a given milieu and then offers hints, increasingly, of "things not being quite right/as they seem." It's well treaded territory, but a Ballard offering along these lines is usually a yarn not quite like anyone else's.

You just yarn'd Ballard!

sparky wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 1:28 pm You just yarn'd Ballard!

The tales do often get out of hand!

DaveA wrote:

sparky wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 1:28 pm You just yarn'd Ballard!

The tales do often get out of hand!

I eschewed emojis on this forum back when they emerged, and I still can't bring myself to use them here, despite using them regularly in personal communication now. Right here, I'd be torn between the straightforward smile and The Scream emojis.

Reading the chapter titles of a Ballard novel out loud would constitute a yarn in itself.