Here is the Sex Pistol's performing God Save the Queen. I would suggest watching the video, because to me, what they do should be classified Performance Art.
Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs by John Lydon
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I saw John Lydon on the Conan O'Brian show and was impressed with his thoughtful intelligence. He was also promoting this book, so I bought it.
It is difficult to say whether I gained any insight to the Punk movement of the late seventies. After reading this book I conclude that everyone involved was a bunch of illiterate reprobates who were anti-everything, including each other. The Sex Pistols glorified in their disgusting shenanigans on stage, got lots of trash thrown at them while they were performing and, unsurprisingly imploded without hope of recovery only a couple of years after they began.
Most people who are remotely interested in this genre are familiar with Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungeon and their fast track to perdition, but this book only speaks of them peripherally. I did find it ironic that they all hated Nancy so much because of her aggressive, abrasive and immoral character. Uh, isn't that the embodiment of the Punk movement?
But they also hated her for getting Sid hooked on heroin. I personally think his mother, a heroin addict, and Sid's supplier, had something to do with that, although no doubt, Nancy accelerated Sid's race toward destruction, but the reality is, no one takes you where you don't want to go.
The book is narrated by many people, not just Mr. Lydon, and I will give him credit that he does not censor anyone's commentary, even if it does not put him in a good light.
Finally, I have to say I got tired of reading it, because regardless of what middle schoolers and emotionally immature adults think, dropping the F-bomb every other sentence and describing how you trashed people's houses or how many women you were with, is actually a banal read. I started racing through the last quarter just to finish it.
I have already bought Lydon's second book, Anger is an Energy. He was older when he wrote it. Let's hope he's grown up a little as well.
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Here is a great favorite of mine, Glenn Gould, playing Beethoven's Tempest Sonata. If you want to skip his talking about Beethoven, start at 5 minutes 33 seconds.
Years from now, when I'm gone and my library becomes world famous, my books will become priceless collectors items. I can imagine the conversations:
"Are you sure this is an authentic Wilfong?"
"Oh yes! Look at the trademark bird nibbles on the dust jacket."
Officers and Gentlemen by Evelyn Waugh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the second in a trilogy about the adventures of Guy Crouchback who, although older than the average soldier, wants to fight for his country.
As the blurb says, he has been ousted from his previous company due to some mishap, of which cause was due to his incompetence, and here he is on a Scottish island, in training with another cast of characters who could pass as Keystone Cops or the police force in Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance. It all seems rather funny, until they go to the island of Crete and put their training to practice. Then the butchery of real war pay its toll. Much of this is due to the idiocy of the leadership, making obtuse decisions.
I'm sure that is an accurate description of Waugh's view of war.
The story line, seemed sketchy to me and tended to bounce from character to character. I felt like I was watching a Soap Opera where the scenes and isolated plots of each character, while interesting and funny, had no connecting thread to each other.
The dialogue and the writing was sharp and witty, but overall, I preferred the first book, Men at Arms.
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Here is J. S. Bach: Trio Sonata no. 5 in C Major BWV 529 (Allegro).
Today I am combining a couple of my shorter reviews. I have a lot of reviews on Goodreads that I need to transfer over to my blog. I guess I will be busy doing that this week.
Saint Thomas Aquinas by G.K. Chesterton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Chesterton is always a roller coaster ride to read. I read somewhere that he dictated all of his writing to a secretary with no revising. While this does prove what an amazing genius Chesterton is, it also helps to understand why you feel as though you are racing around inside his head, plucking one idea out of another.
His turns of phrases are fantastical and are so well stated, sometimes hard to understand, but mostly proverbs that leave you thinking, "Yes! That is very true and I never thought about it that way."
While this is a life of Saint Thomas, an actual chronology of the saint's life is quite minimal. What the bulk of substance is about is a critical analysis of St. Thomas' theology compared and contrasted with St. Augustine's and also later Martin Luther's. Mostly, though, it is like all of Chesterton's literary essays, which are a comparative and contrast to the Spirit of the Age, which dares to call itself rational and enlightened.
Chesterton is a Catholic, through and through, and while I don't hold that against him, I must confess I am more in Augustine and Luther's camp than Aquinas'. I would not mind reading another biography or at least a book about Aquinas' doctrines to get a better idea of how well supported his theses are.
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The Westminster Confession Of Faith, A Study Guide: A Verbal Modernisation Of The Text As Adopted By The Church Of Scotland In 1647 With Analysis And Commentary by Rowland S. Ward
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
For those of us who love to read exactly what particular denominations believe about Systematic Theology, this is a good resource.
This confession details what Orthodox and conservative Presbyterians believe about God, the Bible, and the church. It is includes a thorough statement about every aspect of Christianity. Who is God, what is the Trinity? What is the Bible, is it inerrant etc..what is the church body, what is a Christian and so on.
This edition is also a study guide with expanded explanations of each statement by Rowland S. Ward. I can't say I agree with everything he says, but anyone who would like a deeper knowledge of the Christian faith from a Reformed perspective would find this an excellent resource.
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And, finally, I am trying to improve my language skills by reading the entire Bible in French. There was a cheap download for my Kindle. I'm up to Numbers.
Until next time: Adieu!
This is one of my all time favorite Renaissance songs:
There seems to be two camps concerning Kindles. Those that use them and those that wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole. I must admit when they first came out I was appalled. The thought of reading one of my glorious books on an electronic device was unthinkable.
Of course I'm conservative about everything. I only wear clothes as they're going out of style; they're much cheaper that way, for one thing. They're no longer popular for another. I hate belonging to a herd. Maybe I'm arrogant.
But we were speaking of Kindles. I had always brought my Kindle on overseas trips because it's so much lighter than carrying a suitcase load of books. There are also a lot of free downloads, which is nice.
Lately I've discovering a couple of other perks about my Kindle. One, gratification is immediate. I click on the buy link and voila! The book is in my house. Secondly, I don't have to worry about what condition it will be in we it arrives. I have had a few bad experiences with that. Some seller's idea of "good" or "like new" condition do not match my own.
Finally, they are considerably cheaper. I could have bought the complete British Pack of Mystery writers for about a hundred dollars. Instead I got the complete set for $15.00 or .99 cents each.
Which is why I bought the following book for my Kindle. It was only $1.99. I got it immediately and wrote a review before it would have ever been delivered to my door.
I have 437 books on my Kindle. I could travel around the world comfortably. Just need to remember the outlet adapter.
Rashomon and Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Collection of short stories by the pre-war Japanese author, Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Akutagawa wrote around 150 short stories before he committed suicide in 1927.
The stories are creepy and eerie, but very well done. Perhaps they are even more beautiful in the original Japanese. Nevertheless, there is something dismal and Sartresque about them. Another descriptive word would be thought-provoking as each tale grapples with evil and the hopelessness of man.
Though the author is from the 20th century, the tales show an medieval, traditional Japan. Maybe Akutagawa saw that this way of life was on the verge of disappearing.
These perhaps were meant to be moral tales, hoping to provoke the readers into recognizing their own guilt and lack of compassion for their fellow man, much like the Indian writer and poet, Rabindranath Tagore.
The first one is probably the most interesting to me. In A Grove, is about a murder with no third person narrator, but several first person narrators. The entire story is through dialogue. Each gives their testimony as to what happened. As each new person gives their version of events, new information is added and enlightens the reader to the actual character of the previous witness. Finally, even the victim gives his testimony through a medium.
Spoiler:
Another dark yet provoking tale is Rashomon. A recently fired servant visits a place where unclaimed corpses are dumped. While there he discovers a old woman stealing the hair from the corpses to sell.
He is angry that someone would stoop to desecrating the dead, but the woman insists she must do so to survive. She then claims the dead woman whose hair she is stealing stole fish when she was alive, but she, too, did it only to survive. So is it evil when one is only doing what one is forced to do?
The servant answers her, that if that is the case, he is justified in stealing from her. So he violently takes her clothes from her body and runs off, leaving the old woman naked among the dead.
I think it is a point well taken. When one begins to justify evil, where is the line drawn? It's just a matter of might making right.
The last story, The Dragon, is the most suspenseful. A priest, tired of being mocked and bullied by his community decides to play a practical joke. He sets up a sign next to a lake near his temple that at a certain date, a black dragon that resides at the bottom of the lake will rise to the heavens.
As more and more people read the sign, word gets around and increasing hordes of people from all over Japan start arriving to see the spectacle. The priest begins to feel uneasy. He meant it as a joke so he could laugh at his fellow villagers. Now what will happen when everyone is disappointed?
The ending is not predictable and rather beautiful.
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I must confess that I love a lot of things Russian, even though I have never been to Russia. My favorite authors are Russian, and so are my favorite ballet choreographers, and of course, composers. Here's a personal favorite: Khachaturian's Masquerade Suite.
Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel by Sherill Tippins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I had read so much about the different people who had lived in the Chelsea Hotel, watched the videos of Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls, as much as I could without falling into a boredom induced coma, other videos about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungeon, Patti Smith... I decided to read a history of the hotel itself.
There is no doubt Sherill Tippins is a good writer. The history from ancient to present flows like oil. We learn of the architects who constructed the hotel in the late 19th century. We learn about the hands who bought and sold the hotel. But mostly we learn about the various famous, and infamous, people who inhabited and co-habited the rooms.
The hotel seemed to be a hub for creative people from the latter decades of the 19th century to the last decades of the 20th. It is still open but closed to all but a few long time residents as new owners have decided to renovate.
The style is Queen Anne, Victorian Gothic, but I also think a dash of Art Deco exists at least in the interior. Just based on the photos I saw.
Authors like Mark Twain, Thomas Wolf, Dylan Thomas, and Arthur Miller stayed. The Beatniks Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, Harry Smith and their ilk lived there for a while. In the sixties, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Leonard Cohen were residents. Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgewick made the place famous with their voyeuristic films that last for hours. And hours.
The beginning of the seventies see Robert Mapplethorpe and then girlfriend, Patti Smith, living together, at least until Mapplethorpe decided to "come out" and kick-start his photograph career the old fashioned way by acquiring a rich boyfriend.
The end of the seventies come crashing down for the hotel with death of Nancy Spungeon when she and Sex Pistol's bass player Sid Vicious were staying there. I appreciated the fair way Tippins described that whole chaotic, messy tragedy. How did Vicious murder his girlfriend when he had taken enough Tuinal to put less hardy souls into a coma? And why weren't the others who admitted to entering their hotel room that night, and apparently stole quite a bit of money from Sid, even questioned?
Much of what Tippins says is interesting especially if you like to read about the lives of the above-mentioned people.
However, I did tire of the constant barrage of salacious gossipy details, who was sleeping with whom, especially all the gay sex. It's like the author was trying to titillate the reader. That is not why I wanted to read a history of the hotel.
Although maybe she could hardly avoid it. The hotel sounded more like it was a hospital for drug-crazed socio-paths.
Yet Abby Hoffman, another resident, as well as Arthur Miller and others, felt they had the authority to proclaim judgement on the rest of America and deem them guilty of materialism, capitalism, and the Vietnam War. It became a religion for them. One they worshiped like a group of rabid animals who felt any means necessary justified acts of violence and inciting riots.
I wonder how a group of moral reprobates, living in their own alcohol and drug-riddled enclave, had the temerity to decide what America's problem was and what the solution was. A solution they felt needed to be forced on the people "for their own good".
Sherill Tippins is very much in their camp and cannot help sharing her own political views as to how conservative presidents caused every ill in the U.S. She ignores a lot to make that point.
You will learn more about the people that lived in the hotel than the hotel itself, but, what is a building? If the walls could talk, I'm sure they would have even more shocking things to say than Tippins. As far as it goes, I think Tippins does a fair job giving the walls of Hotel Chelsea a voice.
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I've just discovered this composer/cellist and I like his sound. He combines his classical training with an Indie style. I hope you enjoy him, too. This is Methods and The Masses by Tanekobu.
Mid-Century: An Anthology of Distinguished Contemporary American Short Stories by Orville Prescott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A collection of a largely unheard of group of authors from the middle of the last century. Some of them deserve to be revived, although good luck finding copies, since most of then are out of print. Most of them are written in a style that dates the story, but some have a sharp style that really draws the reader in and, in the case, of one pokes him in the eye.
I'll mention a couple:
The Day of the Last Rock Fight was written by Joseph Whitehill and I've had a time finding copies of his work. This story is told in the rare second person, with the narrator being an adolescent boy sent to a school for the emotionally disturbed. He has decided to confess what actually happened at a rock fight he was involved in at his former school where a classmate ended up dead. One finishes the story wondering if the narrator is reliable or bonkers.
The Cave by James Michener is a gripping story about a platoon of Navy soldiers and Marines during WWII who are hiding out in a cave on an island in the South Pacific theater. They are listening to a British man on the radio who is giving away the positions of the Japanese planes and battle ships. But who is he? And where is he that he is able to report so accurately the enemies plans and enemies? The story pulls you to the end, which does not spare the horror of war or the fate that can happen to even the bravest.
My favorite was from an author I had never heard of. Her name is Jessamyn West and she was apparently a prolific writer in her time and I was able to find some of her books on Amazon, eBay and even my local library.
The title of the story is A Little Collar for the Monkey. It is about a selfish, domineering woman who rules her life and the people around her with malicious glee. One reads with dread wondering what is going to happen to her victims, but the ending is not predictable.
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Here is a beautiful Fandanguillo by Joaquin Turina Perez, performed by Julian Bream. There should be accents on the "i's" but I have no idea how to do that on my computer.
She insisted that only good had any depth. Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension yet — and this is its horror! — it can spread like a fungus over the surface of the earth and lay waste the entire world. Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.
-Hannah Arendt
The Nazi Hunters by Andrew Nagorski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a truly fascinating account of a segment of history that gets less attention each year. I think a wonderful movie could be made of this book.
Nagorski starts with the end of WWII and begins with the rounding up of Nazi War criminals. He describes the lawyers, tribunes, and the victims. Last but not least, he describes the defendants and their atrocious acts of cruelty (not for the faint of heart) and their fate. He even gives a brief history of the hangman who served out justice to the defendants who were sentenced to death. Not all of them were.
Still, many Nazis got away. Some of this was because they tribunal judge decided that being a guard, or in some way serving in a concentration camp was not evidence of guilt. This was changed, years later, after most Nazis were dead, to guilt by association. If you were a part of the machine, you were still guilty.
It's interesting the excuses almost all of the criminals caught gave: They were merely following orders and in times of war, one cannot think or question. But that does not explain why some got such sadistic pleasure out of their job, not to mention that there are some things that transcend government orders. There is a higher moral order we must all answer to.
After the initial trials, interest waned in bringing war criminals to justice, mostly because the nations, especially Germany, but also the United States, wanted to put the past behind them. In the United States case, they had become embroiled in the Cold War and their focus had shifted.
But there were individuals that refused to give up the past until all perpetrators had been brought to justice. We learn about Simon Wiesenthal, a holocaust survivor and others who at first fought singlehandedly to bring former Nazis to justice. Nagorski does a nice job giving background information of the Nazi criminals and their hunters.
Much of the book runs like a high action movie. The hunt by the Israeli group, the Mossad, after Adolph Eichmann and the "Angel of Death", Josef Mengele keeps the reader in primed suspense. There are others too. Former Nazis running for offices in German Parliment, France, and also the United Nations.
Nagorski also recounts the efforts of Germany to create a gap in their history for their citizens who were born after the war. Thanks to some piercing documentaries made by a couple of German film makers in the seventies, German youth received a shock and awareness of, not only what happened in their country, but also that beloved relatives, grandparents, aunts, uncles, were a part of this notorious regime.
Hannah Arendt, while covering the Eichmann trial in Israel coined the term, "the banality of evil." She meant that "people who commit acts of evil are not always monsters, sometimes they are bureaucrats."
She asserted "that only good can be radical. Evil can never be radical; it can only be extreme."
"Evil can be extraordinary acts committed by otherwise unremarkable people."
Her articles for the New Yorker, which were later compiled into a book (that I just bought and will read soon), caused a lot of controversy among the Jews, who felt she was diminishing the evil work of Hitler and his regime. Arendt was herself a German-Jewish exile.
I think the thought that evil could become normal by average everyday citizens, makes people uncomfortable. But look at what is accepted in our own society. First it was abortion. Now in New York and Virginia, it's infanticide. And people stood up and clapped.
There are heartbreaking stories, one in particular of a Jewish man riding on a train in Germany, chatting amiably with his fellow passengers, everyone friendly. And then the train stops and soldiers take this man away and no one says a word.
My question is would that be any of us? Like watching the child in our school being bullied and we just stand and watch? I remember as I was entering a grocery store I saw a man screaming at his elderly mother. Two elderly woman passed me by. One said, "That's not right." And the other immediately said, "Yeah, but you can't do anything about it," and both walked into the store.
Isn't that most of us? Don't get involved? I did nothing to help the woman that day.
The book brings us almost up to date as to the accomplished work of these hunters and their untiring work to remind people of the past and that there is no statute of limitations on atrocities.
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