Slow Emergencies (American) Review

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Slow Emergencies (American) ReviewInhale the breathtaking simplicity. Savour the exquisite distilling of words and passions. Behold the condensed choreography of an artist's soul. No, Slow Emergencies is not a large book. It is, however, a vast, un-romanticized exploration of a life in art. The magnitude of its spirit spills far beyond the confines of the book's covers. The simplicity of the narrative can mislead some to think the book is about the protagonist's choice between career and family. Not so - this ostensible issue is the surface manifestation of a deeper struggle.
In Slow Emergencies, linguistic and structural sophistication is a canvas for the unfolding of timeless conflicts - between divine gifts and mortals, and between favoured mortals and society. Lin, the heroine of this book, does not choose. She is chosen. The novel presents a protagonist who, after much struggle to remain "normal" and to conform to the diktats of society, surrenders to her beckoning destiny. This is the thematic backbone of Slow Emergencies: we do not choose art - it chooses us. Fighting the honour of the gods is lethal. The only way to survive is to heed the calling. However, neither is there any quixotic notion of a blissful surrender into a joyous dance with the muses. Giving birth to Art (hence, all the conception and birth metaphors) is an agonizing process. The chosen ones are haunted, tormented with burning pain which drives them to the point of insanity, insists on claiming the body, reorganizes its cells and opens them up to the seeds of divine inspiration. Yes, Lin does make a choice, but not between career and family. She chooses life over death.
This book analyzes the effects of such a choice without apologizing for it. The society at large does not understand artists. It cannot, for they are different beings - half human, half divine messengers. Thus, once Lin escapes her suffocating normalcy, the spotlight of the book shifts away from her. Hence we are focused on her all-too-human abandoned family in Small Town, USA. We glimpse the great artist in sporadic tortured-blissful flashes. Humanity exists on the periphery of Inspiration. It is awed, dazzled and frightened by the distant, unfamiliar landscapes of Art. Except this artist happens to be a woman. And when the artist is a woman, humanity also condemns: "in these postfeminist times, it's a daring choice to write with tenderness about a woman who abandons her babies for her art." Was the critic reproaching the writer or the protagonist?
Nancy Huston's prose is subtle, elegant and has long been lauded and revered in Europe. Finally, she is being "discovered" here. Tolstoy, once penned the following in his journal, it is very apropos, both to the subject matter and to the writer of Slow Emergencies: "(Art) is a fire sparking up in a human soul. This fire burns, gives warmth and provides light. There are some people who experience the heat, others feel mere warmth, yet a third group only sees the light, and a forth group doesn't sense anything, not even the light. However the majority- the horde - the judges of (artists), don't feel the burning or the warmth, they only see the light. All of them think that the aim of (art) is only to enlighten. People, who think so, become (artists) themselves and walk around with a torch, illuminating lives... Others understand, that the essence is in the warmth, and they artificially warm up that, which is easily warmed ... But a real (artist) cannot force anything. Cannot help anything. Cannot orchestrate anything. He is ablaze, suffering, and he enflames others. And that is the crux of it."Slow Emergencies (American) Overview

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Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams Review

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Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams ReviewOne of the most famous visitors to Odessa was Mark Twain. He found a city that was full of people from various nationalities and religions. He had visited the city in 1867 and was one of the many who stepped ashore to see its famous cascade of stone steps, while observing the "city center, buzzing with the business of trade, shipping and exchange". Because of this, he was reminded of his America.
Thus Mr.King starts his fascinating tale of the city's history-a city founded on the shores of the Black Sea. Later on you could find in it everything and everyone: Russians, Romanians, Jews, Greeks, Italians, Germans. The city has attracted all kinds of people. Many of them were prominent figures and they included Alexander Pushkin, Grigory Potemkin, Jose de Ribas, Isaac Babel and various Jewish writers and Zionist activists. It was a city where intellectuals, crooks and raconteurs were living side by side. Like most sea and river ports, Odessa became a haven for the underworld and this thing in itself "became one of the deepest and most enduring features". Criminals, delinquents, Jewish artful dodgers and schemers populated the city, which was built originally by Catherine the Great as a model of Enlightenment. One of the most famous personalities was Illya Mechnikov, the famous immunologist who earned the Nobel prize and whose tragic life is well told here. His story is only part of a greater picture of the terrible and endless plagues which were rampant in Odessa throughout the centuries. This resulted in many quarantines imposed by the authorities on ships and travellers alike. Another plague, that of locusts during the nineteenth century, caused the inhabitants of Odessa to find comic solutions, such as the creation of enough noise to scare the insects away. One lady had even organized an annual parade to deal with the pests, "by engaging her husband to use a large bell, then the gardener hanging on a water bucket, then the footmen clanging on shovels, followed by housemaids striking pots and kettles, and lastly the children tapping with toasting forks on tea boards".
Not only was the city a magnet for merchants and businessmen.It was to become one of the bloodiest places for the Jews and the famous pogroms these unfortunate people have gone through are retold here in detail. Pogrom survivors came from all professions and social classes. Students, traders, clerks, teachers and port workers comprised the majority, while another group was that of housewives. Thus the city was also a place of tremendous violence and this continued through World War Two, when the famous Roumanian- administered Transnistria Area, which contained tens of ghettoes, was established between the Bug and the Dniester. Odessa was its capital and Mr.King writes that " the horrors of Transnistria and its capital city, Odessa, had analogs in the more extensive and well-documented atrocities committed in the infamous death camps of occupied Europe and at the hands of the German military". Hundreds of thousands of Jews perished there. The chapter on the capture and trials of many well- known Romanian Fascist leaders is extremely interesting. Some of these included Ion Antonescu, Mihai Antonescu and the Governor of Transnistria, the murderous professor Gheorghe Alexianu, whose headquarters during the war was to be found in the former palace of Counts Mikhail Vorontsov, another prominent man who developed Odessa. Some Odesssan Jews who left the city formed the Odessan diaspora ,many of whom ended up on Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
The book is superbly researched, using many new and unknown sources and containing as rich bibliography. It is a history of courage, tragedy, fun, crime, murders, intellectuals and artists, villains and geniuses, and it is also a tale of optimism that characterized the city of dreams. This book is highly recommended because it is a tale of courage and glory of a world that was and will probably never exist again.Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams Overview

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I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 Review

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I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 ReviewMy review refers to the german original edition of the Klemperer diaries from 1933-1945. In the german edition, the diaries are not published in two parts. It must be hard for the english reader to stop 1941 and wait. Klemperer wrote more than 5000 typoscript pages of diary during the nazi period. The german original edition with many cutbacks has more than 1800 pages (1933-1945), the english translation about 500 (1933-1941), so I expect more cutbacks in the english version - most likely around Klemperers language studies about LTI-lingua tertii imperii, the language of the 3. Reich - more interesting for german native speakers. For the english reader, which had yet only read the diary until 1941 I will give the warning, that the 1942 diary is really the most depressing one.
The Klemperer diary is definitely the best book I ever read about the nazi-time. (second one: Hans Fallada, 1947: "Jeder stirbt fur sich allein" (Everybody dies for himself), English title: ?)
As a German I grew up with an endless amount of information, literature, books, documentations, discussions and history school lessons about the 3. Reich, but the most refer only to long known facts and their problem is, that they are written with the look of the survivers, the next generation or the history view which sorts and interprets the facts with the knowledge of the ending. I believe, that nobody can understand the system, who has not read "first-hand" impressions. The Klemperer diary is, what I always was looking for: An uncommented inside view to the all day life in germany in that days and the evolution of the unthinkable. A first-hand information about the terrorism not in the concentration camps, but in "normal" life.
Klemperer shows on nearly every page of his book, how many germans didn't follow Hitler's antisemitic view. He noticed the meanings, conversations, wishes, anxiety of the german population and always wondered about the opinion of the majority - is it pro or contra Hitler? He noticed the endless list of restrictions for the jews - simple and little things, which are forgotten and pressed to the background by the horror of the concentration camps, but new for us today. He noticed, how people divide in heroes and opportunists. By reading about the nazi-time we always ask ourself "What would I have done?" Would I had helped the people who needed me despite of the danger of loosing my own life, or would I had taken care only for my own security.
It's hard to imagine, that someone can register, analyse und document all this on an unbelievable level of quantity and quality under the circumstances of starving, illness, pressure work und humiliation. He wrote not only a diary, he wrote high level literature - espessially his description "Zelle 89" about his 8-day prisonary on a level like "Schachnovelle" (Chess novell) from Arnold Zweig (highly recommended!). Around Victor Klemperer his (and the readers) friends are murdered or make suicide and he expects his own death every day but he wrote a real thriller like nobody else. We know, that he survived, but nearly everybody else, who was introduced to the reader didn't. A fiction thriller can not be a better page turner.
After reading this diaries I decided to buy also his memories from 1881-1918 and the diaries from 1918-1932 to read how life was during World War I and how the republic turned to dictatorship and his diaries from 1945-1959, to read why he decided to stay in East-Germany and join the communist party - in contrast to his liberal political opinions. Together all four books must be the best inside view to german history during these important periods.
The book is a memorial for all the nameless, who decided to be a hero (espessially Eva Klemperer) and for the six million, which would not have lost their life, if there had been more heroes. It brings us back a remembrance to at least a few of the six million precious human beings Europe lost forever and brings us back, that the nazis really killed a main part of the elite of european culture and society by killing the jews.
Buy it and read it.I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 Overview

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Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora Review

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Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora ReviewLet me first say I have read 100's of Holocaust survivor books so I do consier myself well educated in what happened in WWII.
This book arrived in the advanced uncorrected proof for my review at 3pm. I read non-stop until 1:30am and finished the book.
The story opens when an 18 yr old Pierre Berg, Gentile, non-Christian part of the French Resistance arrives at a friends home to visit just as the Gestapo arrives. He is asked for his "papers" and of course he has false ones so he is taken away also.
What he indures in Auschwitz is very accurate to well documented eye witness accounts that I have read. His treatment was brutal. When reading this keep in mind it is being told in the language of an 18yr old. He wrote down his account right after the war when the memories were fresh. Now in 2008 Pierre is getting the word out in English before all who where there are gone.
I was amazed at his strengh of spirit and will to live as he had the dead all around him. I cannot image doing some of the things he had to do. Picking up the dead, waking up with the dead, riding in a boxcar on top of mounds of dead bodies. But he kept on.
During a long part of the story he meets up with an old classmate Hubert and they keep each other going.
The punishment he got on his second day at Auschwitz after "pooping" aside the Block at night was horrific. I myself would not have survived that one act.
He was in the wrong place at the wrong time in the beginning but as things play out he gets the lucky if you can call it breaks. He also had the advantage of speaking 4 languages and understanding more. Being well educated and quite smart he was able to pass himself off for different trades that he knew just enough to get by which in many cases saved his life.
Pierre became a master at "organizing" This was what they called stealing things to survive. You had to do this or you die.
I like the fact that when they write a German sentence they give you the translations, this makes for a much fuller understanding of what is going on.
He lives through Drancy confinement, Auschwitz,the famous Death March out of Auschwitz, Dora, Ravensbruck, Living through the Russian liberation at Wustrow which alone was a miracle. I think we forget sometimes how hard it was for all after "liberation" to get back home when you are sick and starving and have nothing but your stinking rotted "pajama's" to wear.
Now Pierre Lives in the USA and had worked 40 years as a machinist in the movie industry.
This book is very well documented as to being historicaly correct. It is a fresh story being written by a non-Jew. I wept at what he had to go through, I thank God he made it and has shared his experience so that we never forget.
Well Done. I would suggest this is for readers over 17yrs old due to the very graphic nature of the story.The book is quite graphic and the language is what it would have been at Auschwitz. They don't say will you please do this sir. Keep that in mind. I do not like a lot of bad language but this is HISTORY and this is how it was.
The book is right up there with accounts like All But My Life and Elie Weisel's Night.Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora OverviewIn 1943, eighteen year old Pierre Berg picked the wrong time to visit a friend's house -- at the same time as the Gestapo. He was thrown into the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. But through a mixture of savvy and chance, he managed to survive...and ultimately got out alive. "As far as I'm concerned," says Berg, "it was all shithouse luck, which is to say -- inelegantly -- that I kept landing on the right side of the randomness of life." Such begins the first memoir of a French gentile Holocaust survivor published in the U.S. Originally penned shortly after the war when memories were still fresh, Scheisshaus Luck recounts Berg's constant struggle in the camps, escaping death countless times while enduring inhumane conditions, exhaustive labor, and near starvation. The book takes readers through Berg's time in Auschwitz, his hair's breadth avoidance of Allied bombing raids, his harrowing "death march" out of Auschwitz to Dora, a slave labor camp (only to be placed in another forced labor camp manufacturing the Nazis' V1 & V2 rockets), and his eventual daring escape in the middle of a pitched battle between Nazi and Red Army forces.Utterly frank and tinged with irony, irreverence, and gallows humor, Scheisshaus Luck ranks in importance among the work of fellow survivors Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi. As we quickly approach the day when there will be no living eyewitnesses to the Nazi's "Final Solution," Berg's memoir stands as a searing reminder of how the Holocaust affected us all.

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