Brian Nelson. The Last Sword Maker. Blackstone, 2019.

At one point in The Last Sword Maker there is an epigraph that quotes H.G. Wells writing about “atomic bombs” in 1914. Thirty years before the first actual atomic bomb and only a few years after Einstein discovered the significance of E=mc², Wells was imagining the potential destructive power of atomic energy.

The Last Sword Maker does something similar with nanotechnology. As Wells turned some of his speculation into popular fiction, so author Brian Nelson speculates on possibilities of nanotechnology as a weapon. In doing so, he has created a real techno-thriller.

As I write, I am still waiting out the coronavirus scare.

We read in the novel that hundreds of villagers in Tibet are dying of a mysterious disease that seems to be very selective about who is killed. It is as if the virus is political. We soon discover that the Chinese have created what amounts to man-made viruses, like invisible drones, that identify their victims by their DNA, enter their bodies, and duplicate themselves till the host dies.

At one point the author tells us “If you sat twelve Tibetan men down, all but two or three of them would have served time in Chinese jails” (87). He insists that what he shares about Chinese history is accurate, even if it is not well known.

Just this week I read an article, originally published in Foreign Policy, about Chinese abductions of political enemies from foreign soils. Nelson has the Chinese abduct a number of his main characters from the United States, not because they are political enemies but because the Chinese want their technical know-how. They want to beat the United States in creating a sophisticated man-made nanovirus weapon.

Their cause? The same cause that has been the cause for all brutal regimes in the last century and a half: “the tide of history” (268). But we realize its force comes not so much historical inevitability as it does from something else.

Yet, there was a powerful system controlling these people. And that was the other thing he felt in the Great Lab: fear. (316, Italics in original)

Why do we hear little about such things in the West? We all know the answer: “They were all too afraid of upsetting the great economic behemoth” (54).

The Last Sword Maker, though, is not a political tract.

Wunderkind Eric Hill, Admiral James Curtiss, and others are working on an American top secret project to create microscopic nanocomputers called nanosites that can replicate themselves, acquire information, and perhaps be used as a sophisticated and virtually invisible weapon.

There are many twists and turns. Admiral Curtiss carries some guilt for the loss of life in a successful war operation years ago in the Middle East. Now he may be faced with something similar. The Americans have spies in the Chinese facility; the Chinese have spies in the American facility. Will the Chinese steal American technology for their weapons the way the Soviets stole plans for the atomic bomb during the Cold War?

This is a big deal. Like some of Wells’ writings, there is an element of science fiction here, but this is not far-out technology like Star Wars hyperspace. We know that nanotechnology is real. Chips are getting smaller and more powerful. They make information-gathering drones that resemble insects. We really do not have much further to go.

The story is set in 2025, only five years away. Will there be such a weapon then? It is plausible. No, no one ever built a submarine like Red October, but the technology was plausible in 1984. It is scarily not much different now with the technology Nelson is looking into.

There is one term associated with artificial intelligence in this novel that is new to me. We have heard people like Ray Kurzweil speak of singularity—the point in history when artificial intelligence will behave identically to human intelligence. Here the computer techies speak of the Big Bang (268): When they develop artificial intelligence that communicates with human intelligence so that the brain can absorb and access all the information on the World Wide Web. That appears to be a step beyond singularity. Will we be able to handle it? Or will people like the X-Men actually come into existence?

Yes, The Last Sword Maker is a thriller, and most readers who read it for that will not be disappointed. But it surely raises a lot of other interesting questions and ideas as well. Read it for the adventure; think about it afterwards for the significance of the story.

Brad Thor. Spy Master. Pocket Books, 2019.

Spy Master is another installment in the saga of Scot Harvath, one of the two spy masters in this story. The author expresses disdain for what the CIA has become: an established bureaucracy with a middle management doing nothing out of fear of rocking the status quo. (This reviewer recalls an old saying: “What kind of person do you never find in the CIA? A Republican.)

Harvath, then, works for a private firm that does intelligence outsourcing. In some ways Spy Master is an updated version of Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy’s second novel. That story was about a Soviet plan to take out NATO, and much of the action takes place in Iceland.

Spy Master is set in contemporary Europe, but Russia is still trying to take out NATO. First, as always, sabotage and cyberwarfare get NATO nations arguing with one another. These are followed by plans to gain control of the Baltic Sea as in the old Soviet days.

Instead of Iceland, much of the action takes place on another Nordic island, the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic. Russia figures that if they can control this relatively sparsely populated landmass, they can control access to the Baltic Sea and the Baltic lands Russia still covets: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

Harvath develops a clever plan which not only thwarts a Russian planned tactical occupation of Gotland, but in doing so, he learns the identity of the Russian (the other spy master) behind the disruption of NATO and the planned invasion of the Baltic region.

Throughout the novel, Thor emphasizes the importance of teamwork. To do a good job, one has to have skilled and reliable people working together. Harvath is no lone wolf James Bond character. Success also requires a certain amount of luck. I have to confess there was one situation towards the end where the luck seemed unrealistic, but otherwise this is an entertaining tale.

Just as back in 1987 something like Red Storm Rising might have happened, so with our current international alignments something like Spy Master is within the realm of possibility.

Rudyard Kipling. The Jungle Book. Amazon Classics, 2017.
———. The Second Jungle Book. Amazon Services, 2012.

Kipling’s Jungle Books are two collections of stories, but the majority of the stories tell us about Mowgli, “the man-cub,” raised by wolves in the Indian jungle. Those tales rightly deserve the credit for why we remember these stories. First, a few of the others.

The first non-Mowgli story in The Jungle Book is not even set in the jungle. “The White Seal” is set mostly on an island in the Bering Sea, about as un-jungly (if there is such a term) as you can get. The title character has a number of adventures as he searches the Pacific Ocean for a safe place to breed, away from the seal hunters.

Since the white seal ends up in a sea where sea cows (i.e. dugongs) live, he must end up in the Indian Ocean or nearby seas, so, I suppose, he cannot be too far from a tropical rain forest of some kind. The seals do not have a Law of the Jungle, but they do observe the Rules of the Beach.

“Quiquern” is a very entertaining Arctic survival story. There is no setting farther from the jungle than this one. Well, there is a convoluted explanation at the end that the author got the story from a walrus tusk with carvings that told the story that he acquired in Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka). Like so many of Kipling’s stories, there is a real appreciation and understanding for the culture and survival skills of the Inuit—and, yes, that is what he calls them.

The Second Jungle Book contains a sweet story called “The Miracle of Purun Bhagat.” Sir Purun Dass is high ranking government official who leaves it all behind to become a monk in the Himalayan foothills. He develops a kind of St. Francis reputation, though the author notes that people who stay still and quiet can have animals come close to them. There is no magic other than patience. Ultimately, his awareness of the local fauna provokes him to once again act like the political leader he left behind. That becomes the real miracle.

Other Jungle Book stories include the favorite about the mongoose, “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.” “Toomai of the Elephants” relates a great story about elephant behavior. Is the elephant’s dance a legend, a prank played on tenderfeet, a silly cliche like saying “when pigs fly,” or is it something else?

“Her Majesty’s Servants” tells a story from the perspective of the various animals one might find in an English army camp in India in the nineteenth century including donkeys, horses, camels, elephants, mules, bulls, and dogs. This reminded me of Kipling’s short story “The Ship that Found Itself” where all the parts of the ship on its maiden voyage begin to work together as a whole. So it is with the military animals. Presumably, it will be so with the solders themselves.

Ah, but both Jungle Books mostly tell us about the growth and adventures of Mowgli. While a boy raised in the wild by wolves causes us to suspend our disbelief some, the character and experiences of the animals in Mowgli’s jungle are fairly realistic. It is, for example, much easier to picture Mowgli among wolves and the descriptions of how he survived and what he observed than it is to picture Tarzan and his apes and his fantastical ape-men. If Kipling had the same streak of humor that Twain did, he might have penned “Rice Burroughs Literary Offenses.” Kipling is the realist here.

While most of Mowgli’s adventures are in the wild, he does have some interaction with people. Human nature being what it is,some people think he is evil and try to kill him. Others are grateful to him for saving their lives. One long-lived crocodile enjoys the special treatment he gets from some villagers who think he is a god—even though he occasionally eats a child.

While Mowgli lives by the Law of the Jungle, he uses his wits in such a way that the reader realizes he is, indeed, a human being, a homo sapiens. Mowgli means “frog,” which resembles his state when the animals find him—small and hairless. We see his cleverness especially when he gets his revenge on Shere Khan the tiger or when he outwits a pack of nearly two hundred dholes. He begins to realize that he does not quite fit in when spring mating season comes and even his closest companions are otherwise occupied.

Kipling tells the stories and tells them well. We see the regal black panther, Bagheera; the observant python, Kaa; the various members of the wolf pack, including Akela the noble leader; the wise bear, Baloo; the anarchic monkeys who follow no law; and even the white cobra who guards a treasure the way dragons in Norse myths do. We learn to appreciate the animals for who they are, and even mankind for who they are. The Law of the Jungle teaches them to survive. We can learn a thing or two from it as well.

Dwight D. Eisenhower. Crusade in Europe. Doubleday, 1950.

Crusade in Europe is a classic military memoir by the general who led the Allied forces against Germany and its allies in Europe in World War II. It covers North Africa and Italy but focuses on D-Day and the fall of Germany. Since many people know at least in broad terms what happened, this review will point out significant observations that Eisenhower made.

One point Eisenhower makes immediately is that historically alliances are unreliable. I just finished Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 in two of my classes. That play illustrates this principle clearly. Eisenhower notes that Napoleon succeeded in most of his campaigns because he fought alliances, and the parties disagreed among themselves—just like the Percys in Henry IV. He stresses how important it was to have one overall commander. While he supported the idea, he tells us that he never expected to get the position. He had been promoted so quickly that he was a two-star general but still officially listed as a lieutenant colonel in regular army.

He could keep alliances going. He seemed to get along with everyone and sticks up with nearly every military and political person he had to work with, even General Montgomery, who had a reputation of being full of himself. Eisenhower admired and trusted Patton and stood up against the criticism he often received in the press. Among other things, he notes that Patton’s men were loyal to him. I mentioned in an earlier review that I had an uncle who was in the army in North Africa, Italy, and Northern Europe. The two generals he spoke most highly of were Patton and Eisenhower.

Eisenhower sometimes disagreed with Winston Churchill, but they would always come to an arrangement and carried mutual respect. At the very end he worked with General Zhukov who was leading the Red Army in Germany. He writes that while he was not especially sympathetic to Roosevelt’s domestic policies, that as a war leader of the country, F.D.R. “seemed to me to fulfill all that could possibly be expected of him.” (414)

It seems like the only person he had true difficulties with was Charles de Gaulle. Now, at the beginning of U.S. involvement it was unclear whose side De Gaulle was on. Later Eisenhower understood that once France had been the key power in Europe, and the rapid fall to the German Blitzkrieg was an embarrassment. One French general confided that “we…defeated ourselves.” Throughout, Eisenhower stresses the importance of keeping the alliance “on positive terms.”

He even explains why he called the World War a crusade:

…never before in a war between many nations the forces that stood for human good and man’s rights were this time confronted by a completely evil conspiracy with which no compromise could be tolerated. Because only by the utter destruction of the Axis was a decent world possible, the war became for me a crusade in the traditional sense of that often misused word. (157)

Eisenhower did have some challenges working with the press. Even though the press from the allied nations were all on the same side (something President Reagan contrasted with the press coverage of the Grenada rescue), reporters are looking for conflict, and much of the internal conflict they were reporting on had been fabricated. He also learned—as this reviewer had to learn when he was in the service—not all journalists respect classified or off the record information.

Sometimes there are quips that entertain, or as Eisenhower would say, contribute to morale. He does not quote the famous saying of the 101st Airborne when it was surrounded in Bastogne or General McAuliffe’s monosyllabic reply to the German call for surrender. He does tell the story that when the German garrison guarding the city of Aachen was limited to one building, the American VII Corps started using 155-millimeter rifles to knock the building’s walls down. The German commander surrendered and said, “When the Americans start using 155s as sniper weapons, it is time to give up” (312).

According to Eisenhower two key factors accounted for the Allied victory. World War II was the first war that used concentrated air power. Along with that was the increased industrial production from the Allies. By the beginning of 1943, Germany simply could not keep up. Early in the war, Germany had the advantage in both areas. No allied country was prepared. But by 1943 America in particular was assembling ships, landing craft, airplanes, tanks, jeeps, and weapons at an astounding rate. In one day of bombing in February 1945, the Allies put 9,000 planes in the air over Germany.

Eisenhower tells us that as the Allied forces were massing at the German border in the late fall of 1944, General Omar Bradley predicted that Germany’s only chance to successfully repel their attack would be if they made an advance at the Ardennes Forest. He then drew a likely German plan of attack on a map. “Within a maximum of five miles at any point,” Bradley correctly indicated the “bulge” of what became known as the Battle of the Bulge.

He also tells of how Patton’s troops almost by accident discovered the salt mine where the Nazis had hoarded many stolen valuables and art treasures including “a few millions of gold coins from the United States” (407).

A number of times on the Western Front, they were surprised when the Germans made a move that made little sense and ultimately hurt them. We noted in another review something similar on Hitler’s Eastern Front. They realized that Hitler was overriding his generals according to his own intuition. In that respect, he said, “…we owed a lot to Hitler” (394).

At one point near the end of the war, he described coming to the first concentration camp his troops liberated at Gotha. He said, “I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock.” He made a point of exploring every part of the camp noting details in case people would say “the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda” (404).

Towards the end of the war in Europe, the Allies had to coordinate with the Red Army. Eisenhower’s contact had always been with Stalin. Eisenhower always refers to him as Generalissimo Stalin: He controlled everything. At the Russian and Western lines approached each other, Stalin let the local commander, General Zhukov, act as liaison.

Eisenhower shares some lessons he learned dealing with the Russians and Communists that could still be useful in Western nations that deal with Russia and China today. Eisenhower had a difficult time understanding how the Red Army promoted morale since the Russian command saw the troops as so much cannon fodder. He guessed the morale was simply based only “upon patriotism, possibly of fanaticism” (468).

Another Russian general was surprised that the Western Allies were concerned about the treatment of German prisoners. The Geneva Convention meant little to them. Also when the Western press wrote something unfavorable about the Soviets or Red Army, the Russian command expected the Allied authorities to censor or punish them in some way. When Eisenhower explained freedom of the press, the response was simply, “If you were Russia’s friend, you will do something about it.”This sounds like what the West is encountering with China today. Eisenhower concludes:

Communism inspires and enables its militant preachers to exploit injustices and inequity among men…The sequel is dictatorial rule…Were they completely confident in the rectitude and appeal of their own doctrine, there would be no necessity to follow an aggressive policy. (476-477)

Jesus might say, “You will recognize them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16).

Eisenhower tells of meeting Truman after he became President in 1945. Prior to that, he had only met him “casually two or three times.” Since the war was over, Eisenhower expressed to him a desire to retire quietly. But when they were alone, “he suddenly turned to me and said:’General, there is nothing that I won’t try to help you get. That definitely and specifically includes the presidency in 1948” (446).

At the time, Eisenhower considered this an “astounding proposition.” Crusade in Europe first came out in 1948. However, we know what happened in 1952. The general may have been astounded, but he must have taken the President’s proposition seriously.

Joel C. Rosenberg. The Tehran Initiative. Tyndale, 2011.

Shi’a Islam—centered in Iran—believes that there were twelve great Imams, Muslim leaders, who succeeded Mohamed. The twelfth one disappeared and, according to Shi’ite teaching, will return alongside Jesus to set up a worldwide caliphate.

Sunni Muslims have a similar belief that their Mahdi or savior will come with Jesus to establish Islam worldwide. It might not take too much for someone who claims to be the Twelfth Imam to convince Sunni Muslims that he and the Mahdi are the same person.

Christians, naturally, would see this differently. I recall having a conversation a number of years ago with a Christian scholar about Iran. He said with an ironic smile, “How can we support a country whose goal is to offer hospitality to the Antichrist.”

Over the years I have read a number of works of fiction based on the biblical end times—not just apocalyptic stories, but stories of the Apocalypse. I can think of one published before the twentieth century, I think it was called Raptured. Then there was the A Thief in the Night series. One novel featured Pope Sixtus the Sixth (get it?). Of course, the Left Behind series was a big seller.

The Tehran Initiative appears to be more realistic than any of these others. First of all, it does not claim to interpret Bible prophecy. A few characters do. A few interpret Islamic prophecy as well. But at its core, this book is simply a techno-thriller in the vein of Tom Clancy.

In this case a man claiming to be the Mahdi and the Twelfth Imam has appeared. He has performed a few unusual miracles and appears to have escaped an assassination attempt. People seem to almost instinctively bow to him and call him lord. Though Arab and not Persian, he has persuaded the theocrats of the Islamic Republic of Iran that he is the real deal. He has declared that he will lead Muslims to rule the world. That includes wiping out both the Little Satan, Israel, and the Great Satan, the United States.

The story focuses on David Shirazi, an Iranian-American who works for the CIA. His cover is that he is a German citizen who works for a German telecommunications company. He gets in a few jams, but basically learns that Iran has built a number of nuclear warheads. Under the Twelfth Iman’s direction, Iran will use them to annihilate Israel. Israel does not cover a whole lot of territory, so this is no idle daydream.

One clear question to the Imam is—what about Jerusalem? Muslims value “Al Quds,” too. The Mosque of Omar supposedly shows the spot where Mohamed ascended to heaven from and returned with a message from Allah. On the other hand all Muslims venerate Mecca above all cities, and Shi’ites also value Qom in Iran.

Besides the adventures in Iran with Agent Shirazi, we follow Marseille, an old family friend who may become his girlfriend. Those guys attempt to have a personal life, but it is not easy. We also get some drama from Najjar, a nuclear scientist whom Shirazi helped to escape from Iran.

We also follow President Jackson. Jackson had studied in an Islamic country for grad school, so he believes he understands Muslims. He also feels the United States should go along with the United Nations more, even on Israel. This may make him a little more naive about both Iran and the Mahdi. But if you negotiate with people who call you the Great Satan and whose crowds shout, “Death to America,” what can you expect?

In this case, expect a techno-thriller with a somewhat realistic apocalyptic connection.

For what it is worth, this is probably the first book I have read not associated with Clancy that actually tells a story in a way similar to what he did.

Anton Chekhov. The Duel and Other Stories. Translated by Constance Garnett, Project Gutenberg, 6 June 2013.

This was a freebie both on Project Gutenberg and Amazon which I decided to download because I like some of Chekhov’s stories and plays, and the libraries and bookstores are closed.

The Duel is a novella of about a hundred pages. The main characters are a couple living in sin on the Black Sea in a Russian Caucasian province in the late nineteenth century. The woman has left her husband, and they both left Petersburg to start over. Things move slowly but inexorably toward the duel of the title. Today the story is probably mostly of historical interest because we are reminded of the variety of nationalities and even religions within the old Russian Empire. We also see that social standing based on birth was still primary in the old aristocratic system.

One of the main characters is an impartial doctor who may be a stand-in for Chekhov himself. At one point the doctor notes:

“Faith without works is dead, but works without faith are worse still—mere waste of time and nothing more.” (82, cf. James 2:20)

The most pointed and probably most relevant story today is “The Princess.” The title character is, indeed, a princess. The tale contrasts the way she sees herself with the way others see her. Maybe like an American from inside the Beltway today, she not only has an inflated view of herself and, simply, does not understand anyone outside her class. One line in particular should get us thinking today about how the rich spend their money:

Can you possibly go on thinking of your philanthropic work as something genuine and useful, and not a mere mummery? It was a farce from beginning to end; it was playing at loving your neighbour, the most open farce which even children and stupid peasant women saw through! (175)

That is spoken by one person who is dangerously brave enough to speak his mind. Perhaps it is something we should all be paying attention to.

“The Mire” is probably the funniest or, at least, the most ironic. Here we meet the heiress to a vodka distillery who is Jewish. Like many other places in Europe, usury laws made it more convenient for Russians to borrow money from Jews and vice versa. In this case our protagonist Lt. Sokolsky is trying to get Susanna Moiseyevna Rothstein to pay the two thousand or so rubles that she owes his cousin so that he can get married. I wonder if it inspired Fitzgerald at all.

If Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” were a farce rather than a horror story, you might end up with “The Mire.” My grandfather used to say, “Women—you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.” I once heard a character on television say, “Men—you can’t live with them and you can’t shoot them.” Somehow, both apply to this tale.

Other stories in this collection are worth reading, too. They give us a sense of the Russian middle and upper classes in the two or three decades prior to the Communist revolution. Even then, there is in many of the stories a sense of resignation: We are stuck on the steppes, and there is not much we can do about it. Fifty years later they might be stuck on the collective farm or factory, but how much had changed?

Ilene Smith. Moving Beyond Trauma. Lioncrest, 2019.

Moving Beyond Trauma introduces the reader to Somatic Experiencing therapy. The basic premise is that to recover well from a traumatic experience or upbringing, we have to involve the body as well as the mind.

The author notes that “talk therapy” works to some degree, but especially if a person experiences fear, digestive problems, shaking, or rigidity when encountering a situation or person, then perhaps that individual needs to have control over the body as well. She notes that many times our responses are automatic, based in what she call the reptilian brain, in other words, the brain stem. Our nervous system, after all, goes through the whole body.

She emphasizes the importance of touch to help with people trying to overcome certain fears or trying to establish good relationships with people. The best part of the book are testimonies of some of her clients. This includes people who experienced sexual assault, raised in abusive homes, grieving over someone’s death, fighting an eating disorder, to name a few.

It is not just our minds that we have to bring into line but our bodies through its nervous system.

As I was reading this book, I had an opportunity to test the basic idea on a small scale. When I was a child, I was terrified of dogs. Even after we had a pet dog, certain dogs still made me uncomfortable. When I was a teenager, I recall taking to my mother about it. She said that when I was a baby, she was walking me in a stroller and a dog jumped into the stroller. I was terrified.

Smith notes that some traumas may happen to us before we can speak, some even in utero. I was walking the other day in a park where there were people walking their dogs. None of this particularly bothered me, until one dog I was approaching started barking at me. I felt the old fear well up. I consciously told my body to relax, that it is all right. Immediately that nervous reaction went away. There appears to be something to this. Most of us learn that in this life the mind cannot be separated from the body.

Some of what Moving Beyond Trauma shares sounds similar to primal integration, another holistic psychological technique involving physical actions and touch as well as talk therapy. This has proven to help some individuals as well.

Years ago when I was a stringer for a newspaper, I proposed doing an article on a couple that practiced primal integration. The editor thought it sounded too weird. I get it, but it is hard to argue with success. There are a variety of people and personalities, and not every technique works with every person.

I confess I prefer the term medulla or brain stem to “reptilian brain,” but that is more a matter of taste, I guess. The term reptilian brain may sound creepy, but somatic experiencing may be just what some people need to help them overcome much greater difficulties than being frightened by a dog when a baby.

George Robertson. An Account of the Discovery of Tahiti. 1955. Edited by Oliver Warner, Dent, 1973.

I have owned An Account of the Discovery of Tahiti for a long time but had overlooked reading it. I picked it up out of curiosity to see how it compared with Herman Melville’s Typee, his nonfiction account of spending the better part of a year on the island of Nuku Hiva during his whaling days.¹ Both works are considerably earlier than Robert Louis Stevenson’s The South Seas, which describes an idyllic, Westernized, and Christianized South Pacific.

Robertson kept a fairly detailed diary while he was the sailmaster on board the H.M.S. Dolphin, sailing around the world and tasked with locating a new continent in the South Pacific or South Indian Oceans. Neither existed. (Australia had already been discovered.)

The Dolphin was the first European vessel to land on and truly discover Tahiti. At times the sailing vessel was surrounded by hundreds of Polynesians in canoes. Robertson seemed to be a favorite of the woman who was the Queen. While communication was crude, the sailors and the native people were able to develop a pretty direct and apparently fair trading system. The Tahitians loved metal objects, especially nails. The sailors were delighted with fresh food, poultry, pigs, and fruits.

At first there was a certain amount of mistrust on both sides, but the Dolphin was able to intimidate the native people by their weapons. Soon both sides were peaceable.

There is not a whole lot of specific detail about the culture, but it is interesting to read about this cross-cultural engagement. While Robertson is concerned about skin color, he saw the Polynesians as being much more similar to Europeans than natives of other exotic places they had visited. The women, he writes, were “handsome.” He speculates that they might have had Jewish ancestry because Jews have migrated all over the world.

This book covers a little over five weeks in the summer of 1768. Tahiti really does sound like a tropical paradise. Even though the captain claimed the island for Britain, the French arrived two years later and turned it into one of their colonies. Still this is an interesting historical artifact, and the few woodcut style illustrations in this edition add to the exotic quality of the record.

One curious structure was a small step pyramid, like some of the older Egyptian pyramids or those in Mesoamerica. Was Thor Heyerdahl onto something, or is that just coincidence? Typee goes into much more detail about the lives and lifestyles of Polynesian people, but Master Robertson’s record is a nice introduction.

_________________
¹ Typee covers about a third of a year. Ship records show that Melville actually spent about a month there, so his story is fictionalized. I guess we might call it creative nonfiction today.

Thomas Wolfe. The Web and the Rock. Thomas Wolfe: The Complete Works. 1940. Pandora’s Box, 2018.

Thomas Wolfe’s novels are all autobiographical. The Web and the Rock, his third novel, introduces us to a new character; however, George “Monk” Webber could be a stand-in for Eugene Gant from the first two novels. He comes from a city in the mountains of North Carolina (“Old Catawba” he calls it) near the Biltmore Estate. In this novel, though, he calls Asheville Libya Hill instead of Altamont.

Monk Webber’s background differs slightly from Eugene Gant’s. He is orphaned and raised by relatives with connections to the countryside. Yes, Webber’s father came from Pennsylvania Dutch country like Gant’s, but this pays more homage to Wolfe’s mother’s rural relatives. Instead of going to the state college like Gant, Webber goes to a small Baptist college in South Carolina.

The first part of The Web and the Rock provides the web. Like Look Homeward Angel, it is a collection of memories and sketches of what the people and places were like growing up in the mountains of Old Catawba. Like Gant’s, there are detailed descriptions of George’s relatives, neighbors, and townspeople. All of these people and locations and events provide the network, the web, to his background or foundation.

George begins to get led astray in college. He may or may not have had experiences with prostitutes, but he starts attending an Episcopal church rather than a Baptist church of the school’s affiliation. We skip a few years until George, like Gene, arrives in New York City. He hints about having spent some time in Boston, but there are no Prufrock-like soirees until he gets to the Big Apple.

If his upbringing and later travels are the web, George tells us that Manhattan is the rock. In a previous review I marveled that Wolfe was so meticulously detailed about even random people Eugene Gant saw on a street once but was so vague about the true love he meets or discovers. Not here. Much of this tale is about the tempestuous and intense relationship between Webber and Mrs. Esther Jack.

Like other writers who cut their teeth in the 1920s, we see little remorse for an extramarital affair in here. In fact, Webber frequently complains that Esther has been unfaithful to him in spite of her being married. We meet her about a third of the way through the book, but it is more than halfway before we find out that she is still married. The Web and the Rock is the closest thing to a love paean on Wolfe’s part to his longtime paramour and supporter, Aline Bernstein, who was a stage designer and wife a Jewish businessman.

If even half of the relationship described in The Web and the Rock is based on what really happened, Wolfe owed a lot to “Mrs. Jack.” She was connected. At one point George Webber freaks out, as we might say today, because he has not heard back from a publisher that has had his typescript for five weeks.

Five weeks! As I write this, a publisher has had a typescript of mine for over three years! I once had an article rejected by a magazine after they had had it for four years. The business has surely changed in a century!

As always, Wolfe probably overwrites, but he writes so passionately. We see a lot about the upper class Jewish culture of the turn of the last century in New York. We get a sense of the theater in the 1920s. There is a lot of humor as Mrs. Jack and Webber go back and forth with Jew-Gentile stereotypes. Back then, Christian meant “Gentile” to most Western Jews. As has been said, there is never a dull sentence. Wolfe is simply interested in everything and everyone.

Some of the chapters could be separate stories on their own. At least one was. I started reading the chapter titled “The Child by Tiger,” I knew the story. I do not think I had read the short story by the same name, but I had heard it, probably on The Moth Radio Hour or one of those other literary radio shows. Wolfe was a middle class white from the segregated South. Yes, he sometimes uses language of the time period that would be considered offensive today, but he had great sympathy for the blacks of his hometown and was appalled by the injustice of the Jim Crow system. We find such appalling incidents in his “web.”

Wolfe also had his own take on the Lost Generation. He says that that is what they call us, but what it really means is not so much misplaced, but never found. Still, there is a lot of searching.

Whether it is the horrors of a lynching or the spontaneous camaraderie of the Munich Oktoberfest, The Web and the Rock brings us there. The reader can decide whether George Webber, a.k.a. Gene Gant, a.k.a. Thomas Wolfe, lived a life well-lived, but regardless of that, The Web—the taspestry of life—and the Rock—a “singing” Mannahatta—have an intensity that this prose Whitman weaves, and maybe unravels, for us.

N.B. Because parts are set in the American South of a hundred years ago, some characters in this novel use language that would be considered racist today, though it is clear the author himself does not share that sentiment.

B. F. Westcott. A General View of the History of the English Bible. 1872. Second ed. Amazon.com, 2014.

Since I teach the history of the English Bible in my British Literature classes, I came across this title in a book I recently reviewed that devoted a chapter to Dr. Westcott. This is the most thorough book on the history of the Bible in English through the King James Version. It includes references to editions that no longer exist and does an exhaustive comparison between different versions, especially the more influential ones.

Other books have had the same purpose. For most general readers, F. F. Bruce’s History of the Bible in English is sufficient. Westcott has more details including mentions of a possible English version, clearly neither Latinate nor Wycliffite, that Chaucer may have used and a printed version of the Cheke New Testament. Cheke was Edward VI’s tutor.

As far as we know, Cheke only did the Gospel of Matthew and it was not published until the nineteenth century, three hundred years after he lived. But if there were a Cheke New Testament still in existence, as at least one contemporary source claims, it would be a collector’s item.

There are also many detailed comparisons emphasizing both differences between certain translations and similarities showing likely influences. Westcott also belonged to a committee which was tasked with updating the King James Version, so he does devote a chapter to the work on that.

Because Westcott was such a thorough researcher, A General View of the History of the English Bible is not dated. Anyone who really wants to get delve into the origins and stories behind the translations of the Bible into English from Wycliffe through King James, this book does the job.

Alas, the electronic copy issued by Amazon was clearly done by an optical scan, and no attempt was made to correct problems. Some words are unreadable: They resemble the cuss words from a comic strip. Because superscripts are seldom recorded properly, there is usually a mishmash between the footnotes and the text. The e-book needs some serious editing. My recommendation: Get the above edition and expect to be annoyed, or do an inter-library loan for a printed copy.