What Are You Reading

[Fading Fast]

I'm waiting for payday tomorrow.

Understood - I believe you'll find it a good use of funds.

 

[AmateisGal]

Understood - I believe you'll find it a good use of funds.

Your review was excellent. I didn't realize it had that communist slant, but it will be interesting to read nevertheless. I really enjoy reading novels from the 30s-40s. There's just something about them...

Have you ever read any of Mignon G. Eberhart? She was a mystery novelist from Nebraska who they called "America's Agatha Christie." I like her stuff, as well.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The movie version of "Mortal Storm" was heavily censored by MGM -- the Communist angle was muted, and the word "Jew" was never mentioned for fear of antagonizing the German market -- but it nevertheless landed Frank Borzage, the director, on the Hollywood blacklist after the war as a "premature anti-Fascist." It also, much to Louis B. Mayer's rage, got MGM's entire product banned from Germany for the duration.

 

[Fading Fast]

Your review was excellent. I didn't realize it had that communist slant, but it will be interesting to read nevertheless. I really enjoy reading novels from the 30s-40s. There's just something about them...

Have you ever read any of Mignon G. Eberhart? She was a mystery novelist from Nebraska who they called "America's Agatha Christie." I like her stuff, as well.

The movie version of "Mortal Storm" was heavily censored by MGM -- the Communist angle was muted, and the word "Jew" was never mentioned for fear of antagonizing the German market -- but it nevertheless landed Frank Borzage, the director, on the Hollywood blacklist after the war as a "premature anti-Fascist." It also, much to Louis B. Mayer's rage, got MGM's entire product banned from Germany for the duration.

You get an adumbration of the Communism from the book in Jimmy Stewart's family up at the farm in the movie. Since my radar is tuned to this stuff, I did notice it even before I read the book, but you don't need a radar in the book, it's there bold and proud.

It's funny, as I've read sometimes that the movie didn't mention Hitler or Nazism, which is not accurate as it mentions both and shows swastikas - albeit, it doesn't pound all that home the way later movies will. Also, until Lizzie mentioned it, I didn't notice that the movie never mentioned the word "Jew" as my mind must have just filled in that glaringly obvious blank. Now, having read the book, I'll struggle to keep details like that separate in my mind as the book makes the Roths' family's Jewishness a central theme for obvious reasons.

I thought the blacklist was about Communist sympathizers not anti-Fascist - weren't we all anti-Fascists, at least after the war?

What did Mayer expect - he made an anti-Hitler / anti-Nazi movie, did he really think the Nazis would forgive and forget? Forgiving a grudge was not a very Hitler / Nazi trait. And doesn't that movie feel much more Warner Brothers than MGM?

Lizzie, have you read the book?

I have not heard of Mignon G Eberhart (quite the name that is, the only thing that could have made it better would have been if her last name was Filet), but will look her up now. But recognize, if she is really, really, really good, you run the risk of becoming my second favorite writer from Nebraska .

 

[Fading Fast]

Your review was excellent...

Thank you. As you mentioned you were looking forward to it, I didn't just slap it out - as I do many posts here (which is what I think we're suppose to do most of the time), but actually gave it some thought and effort. There's so much going on in the book - and I didn't want to give much away - that it required a little consideration as to how to review it without ruining it for those who haven't read it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I thought the blacklist was about Communist sympathizers not anti-Fascist - weren't we all anti-Fascists, at least after the war?

What did Mayer expect - he made an anti-Hitler / anti-Nazi movie, did he really think the Nazis would forgive and forget? Forgiving a grudge was not a very Hitler / Nazi trait. And doesn't that movie feel much more Warner Brothers than MGM?

Lizzie, have you read the book?

Most people in the US were definitely *not* strongly anti-Fascist up until 1939 -- there was a very strong streak of "look what Hitler's doing for his country" from some working-class people on one side, especially German-Americans and Irish Catholics, and "We can do business with Hitler!" from the capitalist class on the other, and in the middle you had the isolationist "let them keep it over there" majority. Father Coughlin was on the air every Sunday giving out sermons that could have come straight out of Goebbels, and Lindbergh and Ford were prancing around displaying their Nazi medals. Those Americans who not only were anti-Fascist but vocal about it were dismissed either as Jewish rabble-rousers (Walter Winchell) or "Red dupes" (the Lincoln Brigade.)

In the years after the war, when there seemed to be a real movement for the political rehabilitation of Germany, if you were identified as a supporter of an anti-Fascist movement before 1939, it was as good as carrying a signed photo of Earl Browder in your wallet so far as the blacklisters are concerned. Most of the people listed in "Red Channels" were cited for holding such sympathies, for supporting Russian war relief, or for supporting a second front before 1944, not for being actual members of the CPUSA.

I've always figured somebody must've distracted Mayer and locked him in a closet for the time it took to make "Mortal Storm," because MGM was by far the studio least friendly to any sort of left-wing philosophy in its films: in fact, Mayer had hired the studio out to make fake newsreels in order to undermine Upton Sinclair's candidacy for Governor in 1934, so you can see quite plainly where his personal sympathies lay. Warners, at least until Jack Warner got his head handed to him by the SAG, was generally much more hospitable to the left-leaning type of picture, and you'd have thought if this story was going to be filmed it would be filmed there,, and I imagine it would have been if not for the splatback over "Confessions of a Nazi Spy."

I did read it a long time ago, and remember being very impressed. All this talk of it makes me want to go up to the attic and see if I've still got it in a box up there.

 

[AmateisGal]

I have not heard of Mignon G Eberhart (quite the name that is, the only thing that could have made it better would have been if her last name was Filet), but will look her up now. But recognize, if she is really, really, really good, you run the risk of becoming my second favorite writer from Nebraska .

Haha! I won't claim to be ever be as good as Mignon! She published not only novels, but short stories in women's magazines, as well, back in the day when you could actually make a good living as a writer. How I wish those days would come back...

 

[Fading Fast]

Haha! I won't claim to be ever be as good as Mignon! She published not only novels, but short stories in women's magazines, as well, back in the day when you could actually make a good living as a writer. How I wish those days would come back...

You and me both. I augmented my income quite nicely for many years as a writer and thought, back then, that I would do it full time as I got older. Instead, the internet, basically, killed the market value for the type of writing I do - so that plan got crumpled up and dropped in the wastepaper basket .

 

[Trenchfriend]

Honoré de Balzac - "A political process in the Kaiserreich"

A novella. A polithriller about 55 pages.

 

[HanauMan]

Yeah, go ahead and laugh.....

I found my childhood copy of Brighty of the Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry which I've had since the early 70s. The story, though simple, is entertaining enough for an adult re-reading and the snowy ending appropriate enough for this time of year.

Here's to Brighty the burro, may his spirit still roam free and wild in the canyons.......

 

[Harp]

Honoré de Balzac - "A political process in the Kaiserreich"

A novella. A polithriller about 55 pages.

I haven't read Balzac since undergrad days, Hugo was more of an influence, and Proust-somehow Balzac was pushed to the back burner
and seemingly forgotten. My mistake, but your cite brings back La Comedie Humaine. I must reacquaint myself with him. Thanks.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I finished the politthriller.

Holy s..t! This story led directly to Napoleon on the battlefields by Jena-Auerstedt!

 

[Touchofevil]

I have not heard of Mignon G Eberhart (quite the name that is, the only thing that could have made it better would have been if her last name was Filet), but will look her up now. But recognize, if she is really, really, really good, you run the risk of becoming my second favorite writer from Nebraska .

I had to stop when I saw the magic words, “Mignon” and “Filet.” Now, I too must look up her name.

 

[Fading Fast]

I had to stop when I saw the magic words, “Mignon” and “Filet.” Now, I too must look up her name.

If it turns out her mother's maiden name was Baconwrapped, then, at least least one thing was perfect in the world.

 

[Touchofevil]

If it turns out her mother's maiden name was Baconwrapped, then, at least least one thing was perfect in the world.

It is pretty obvious what it is that is most likely to catch my attention. They are words of beauty/magic.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Witness To A Century: Encounters with the Noted, the Notorious, and Three SOBs," by George Seldes.

I have always meant to sit down and read this 1987 memoir. Thirty years ago I *listened* to it, faithfully, as it was presented on the NPR "Radio Reader" program during my drive home from work, but I've never gotten a chance to read the actual book until I picked up a nice hardcover copy for a buck at the Goodwill.

I don't believe in idealizing people as "heroes," but if I did, George Seldes would be one of mine. He was the most outspoken muckraker of the 1930s and 1940s, and the fiercest critic the so-called "free American press" has ever had - mercilessly exposing most of his colleagues, and most of American journalism in general, as brasscheck tools of corporate or commercial interests. But before he took up the cudgel, he was one of the top reporters in the business -- in the 1910s, 20s, and early 1930s he interviewed every major figure on the world stage with the notable exception of Hitler, who refused to see him, and he had strong opinions on every one of them which he shares, in a delightfully fiesty manner. This is no old man's nostalgic reminiscences -- these are the experiences of a man who never, in all his one hundred and five years of life, ever once willingly suffered a fool. It's one thing to read a dry historian's description of William Jennings Bryan, Lenin, Mussolini or FDR -- it's quite another to hear unvarnished, unapologetic opinionation from someone who actually looked them in the eye and isn't afraid to tell you what he saw.

The "Three SOBs" of the title get it with both barrels. The first two are interesting choices: Italian poet/novelist Gabriele D'Annunzio, "a filthy baldheaded old man" who was the intellectual force behind the rise of Fascism in his country, and movie rake Errol Flynn -- who Seldes calls "one of the most despicable human beings who ever lived" for setting up a fake "Spanish War Relief" fund -- and, briefly, his own "war death" -- as a cheap publicity stunt for a movie, only to spend his tour of the front looking for a good whorehouse. Seldes proposes several worthy candidates for the third. The most egregious is a name that doesn't come up much anymore: George Sokolsky, who Seldes considers the sleaziest, most disreputable man ever to earn his living as a journalist. Seldes and Sokolsky had crossed foils repeatedly during the Era: after Seldes exposed the fact that Sokolsky was a paid agent of the National Association of Manufacturers while posing as an independent reporter, Soklolsky spent years trying to pin the Red label on Seldes until even Joe McCarthy himself told him to lay off. But here Seldes reveals a few really choice morsels about "Sok:" not only was he a paid agent of the Japanese Government right up until the moment the bombs fell at Pearl Harbor, but he was *also* on the payroll of the *Chinese* Government -- a man who wanted to make sure he'd be on the winning side no matter which way the dice rolled. A true full-color SOB indeed, a faker of fake news before the term was invented. The other two candidates for the third SOB, NAM radio stooge Fulton Lewis Jr. and the repellent Hearst colmunist Westbrook Pegler, come close, but Sokolsky for me, and I suspect for Seldes too, takes the prize.

This is a big, thick volume, but it's a fast, breezy read -- it's organized thematically rather than straight chronologically, so it lends itself to browsing a chapter or two before bed. A great book by someone who comes as close as anyone, to me, to being an actual "American Hero."

 

[MondoFW]

Currently reading Brave New World as a mandatory read for school. While I do find some pleasure in some of the commentary from author Aldous Huxley, it's not my kind of style. Prior to this, we read Animal Farm as a class, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

 

[HanauMan]

Re-reading A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle.

I remember how popular this book was back in '89 / 90 when it first came out. The author died just a few days ago, so I fished out my old copy and am revisiting the book for a trip down Memory Lane. I was 25 when it was originally published and I craved that lifestyle so much (instead I'm copying Bill Bryson in Notes From a Small Island, but I'm happy enough with that!!).

 

[Benzadmiral]

ABE is a fantastic resource - basically, it's an on-line site comprised of a massive number of second-hand book dealers. I've been buying books there for many years and have only had good experiences. In general, my experience with second-hand book dealers is that they are people in the business because they have a passion for books.

I've made a boatload of purchases from dealers on Abebooks. One, an Alfred Hitchcock anthology called Fear and Trembling (ghost and horror stories), was a paperback from 1963 that looked as if it had been in a vault for 50 years -- brand-new. The dealers' descriptions of their wares are usually very accurate.

There is also a forum on there where you can ask questions. I was trying to find a paperback "Home and Family Medical Encyclopedia" that my family had owned when I was a teen, but I couldn't recall the author's name. A few posts on Abebooks' forum, and someone had the correct title and author for me.

 

[Fading Fast]

Currently reading Brave New World as a mandatory read for school. While I do find some pleasure in some of the commentary from author Aldous Huxley, it's not my kind of style. Prior to this, we read Animal Farm as a class, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

I enjoyed both and, like you, read them for the first time back in school. Also similarly, I preferred "Animal Farm " and (for me) preferred Orwell as an author.

What you might enjoyed is one of Orwell's less-well-known books (you'll want to read "1984," but you already know that). For me, I love Orwell's "Burmese Days." It's is so "quietly" powerful, that I find myself thinking about that book whenever I read about corrupt officials (happens, sadly, way too often) or see a selfish person play with another's romantic feelings (also, sadly, happens way too often).

Great to see a young passionate reader.