What Are You Reading

[ChiTownScion]

I think, so far as leftist writers are concerned, there's a lot to pick from from as far as literary quality is concerned. Steinbeck, of course, was in a class by himself, and I very much enjoy the plays of Clifford Odets, although some find them dated.

My favorite is James T. Farrell. Reading the Studs Lonegan trilogy for the first time was a high water mark of my misspent youth.

 

[AmateisGal]

The late James Salter whose canon includes The Hunters; A Sport and a Pastime; Light Years; Dusk; and Burning the Days
is a highly instructive writer. Edith Wharton herself would have admired him-despised him, of course, but c'est la vie.

I will check him out. Thank you!

 

[AmateisGal]

I just added some of his books to my Goodreads shelf. The one novel, All That Is, looks particularly good since it is set right after WW2.

 

[Big J]

@ AmateisGal,

You published on German POW's in the USA IIRC?

I've just been looking at internment of Japanese in the USA (surprised that Hawaiian-Japanese got a pass on that, despite one of the arguments for internment was that two Hawaiian-Japanese families attempted to aid and conceal a shot-down Japanese pilot at Pearl Harbor).

I'm guessing conditions in the US were pretty good for German POW's?
US internment conditions for Japanese-Americans seems to have been better than that now provided by the Japanese government for Japanese displaced by the 2011 earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster [huh]

 

[Seb Lucas]

This last month: Steinbeck (Cannery Row), Orwell (essays), George Elliot (Mill on the Floss), Christopher Hitchens (God not Great), Gore Vidal (Empire)

 

[AmateisGal]

@ AmateisGal,

You published on German POW's in the USA IIRC?

I've just been looking at internment of Japanese in the USA (surprised that Hawaiian-Japanese got a pass on that, despite one of the arguments for internment was that two Hawaiian-Japanese families attempted to aid and conceal a shot-down Japanese pilot at Pearl Harbor).

I'm guessing conditions in the US were pretty good for German POW's?
US internment conditions for Japanese-Americans seems to have been better than that now provided by the Japanese government for Japanese displaced by the 2011 earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster [huh]

Yep - my book is specifically about the Nebraska POW camps. The German POWs were treated *very* well here. Had more than enough food, were kept busy with tons of activities (they put on plays, had orchestras and bands, hobby competitions, education classes) and of course, worked. There were problems, of course, but most of those problems were between the Nazis and the anti-Nazis.

 

[Big J]

Yep - my book is specifically about the Nebraska POW camps. The German POWs were treated *very* well here. Had more than enough food, were kept busy with tons of activities (they put on plays, had orchestras and bands, hobby competitions, education classes) and of course, worked. There were problems, of course, but most of those problems were between the Nazis and the anti-Nazis.

Holiday camp rather than concentration camp!
Axis POWs seem to have received relatively very good treatment. God bless our superior ideologies! (or something like that).

 

[AmateisGal]

Holiday camp rather than concentration camp!
Axis POWs seem to have received relatively very good treatment. God bless our superior ideologies! (or something like that).

As a testament to just how well they were treated, many came back after the war and stayed. All POWs had to return to Germany for repatriation, but if they were able to get a sponsor here in America (often a former employer), then they could return within a few years after the war ended. Others came back to visit their former POW camps and had reunions.

 

[Harp]

This last month: George Elliot (Mill on the Floss)

Rebecca Meade's My Life in Middlemarch; despite Joyce Carol Oates' advocatus diabelli New York Times review,
is a most enjoyable journey through Elliot's acclaimed novel.

_________

Rummaging in a collection of orphans, a gem foundling discovered: Alexander Woollcott's Long, Long Ago. Wonderful writing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Woollcott is one of those writers who, when he's at his best, is more than good enough to overcome his self-created reputation. "When Rome Burns" is a hoot.

 

[AmateisGal]

Avenue of Spies: A True Story of Terror, Espionage, and One American Family's Heroic Resistance in Nazi-Occupied France by Alex Kershaw

 

[Fading Fast]

Just read the first five paragraphs on the new Harper Lee novel, "Go Set a Watchman," as the WSJ published the first chapter today. I stopped after five paragraphs because I was enjoying it and want to wait until I have the full novel. Definitely had a Harper Lee feel.

 

[VonGriz]

Hi all. New to the forum. Thought I'd jump into this thread!

I'm re-reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I should be done by Christmas. : )

 

[LizzieMaine]

"One Nation Under God," by Princeton historian Kevin Kluse. A fascinating examination of civic religion in America over the last eighty years, with a specific focus on the activities of the early Los Angeles "megachurch" pastor James Fifield and his collusion with the National Association of Manufacturers and the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency to create a particular mythos that's found its way deep into our national consciousness.

 

[Harp]

Just read the first five paragraphs on the new Harper Lee novel, "Go Set a Watchman," as the WSJ published the first chapter today.

I bailed out of the WSJ excerpt, but caught a few online Telegraph remarks.

 

[T Jones]

I'm reading, Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America, by Lyle Dorsett. From the "Kerosene Circuit" to the "Sawdust Trail", ex professional Baseball player turned Evangelist, Billy Sunday was a "household name" who preached to thousands and made headlines as America's most famous preacher at the turn of the 20th century. Of notable interest was his influence on the temperance movement and prohibition. His nationalistic and Pro American preaching and his anti immigration stance drew ire from the loathsome Reds like Emma Goldman and Carl Sandburg, to name a few. A very interesting figure in America's history.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ah, Sandburg. After Stephen Vincent Benet, my favorite poet.

The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

As for Sunday, very much a man of his time and his geography. Branch Rickey was out of exactly the same mold, but he stayed in baseball rather than going into evangelism like his mother wanted him to do.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Then there was the fact that he was a paid shill for big business. Not much has changed in 101 years: mercenary religionists still prostitute themselves for the same lot.

 

[Harp]

Ah, Sandburg. After Stephen Vincent Benet, my favorite poet.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is mine.:eusa_clap Aurora Leigh; and most especially Sonnet 43 How Do I Love Thee...

Poe dedicated his Raven to her, and he's one of my favorites also.

 

[T Jones]

View attachment 32038

Then there was the fact that he was a paid shill for big business. Not much has changed in 101 years: mercenary religionists still prostitute themselves for the same lot.

Given the fact that the anti-Christian socialist, Henry Tichenor was its editor, "The Melting Pot" lent itself to leftist propaganda rather than to printing actual facts. Throughout the era of the dreaded "Reds" the influence of Billy Sunday's preaching was the bane of the left. Tichenor, Goldman, Reed, Sandburg, and other notable Reds and "Social Gospelers" all hated the fiery Evangelist. Authors, William McLoughlin, Lyle Dorsett, and Roger Bruns have written excellent biographies on the Evangelist, mentioning also the history, the people, and the events of his era.