Dann Todd's 'Dain Bramage'^**

What A Life Buys

h/t to Sgt. Hook

Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, Iraq’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, recently spoke to a group of Gold Star Mothers. In his speech, he gave thanks for the lives that have been given to liberate his country.

""We were a country without hope," Istrabadi said. "The intervention of the United States in my country has been a lifeline for us. It has restored hope for us that our future will be very different from our past."

Hearing laughter in Iraq's streets again and no longer feeling the need to cringe when admitting their heritage is part of what America's intervention has given back to his country, he said.

"These are not small things. These are things for which this country, and you as individuals and your children, have earned our tremendous gratitude," Istrabadi said. "Words of thanks truly seem to me to be insufficient to convey to you the thanks of a country, a grateful nation, which has lingered too long under tyranny."

Iraq's gratitude to the United States and the families who have sacrificed personally "will be eternal," he said.

Don't let the fact that this sort of thing isn't covered by the nightly news make you think that it isn't important or accurate.

by Dann 

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Developments In Lebanon

While downloading comics this morning, I heard the news that Israel has invaded Lebanon. After so much progress in Lebanon, it is hard to imagine a move that would move things backwards so quickly.

by Dann 

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I'm Surprised.....

....that my southeren factor isn't higher. I speak fluent southeren.

h/t to Toni for the survey.

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

20% Upper Midwestern

5% Dixie

5% Midwestern

0% Yankee

by Dann 

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"On The Eve": A Book Review Of Sorts

Some time ago, Mike Peterson recommended Ivan Turgenev's "On the Eve" as an example of Russian literature worth reading. A shorter time ago, I finished "On the Eve". Since then, I have owed Mike a response indicating my impression of the book.

It took longer than planned. The following is what I finally cobbled together. Enjoy. Comment if you like. Reading the book would be a worthy idea as well. If you decide to order "On the Eve", permit me to recommend two things:

• Have your local purveyor of books order a copy from Indypublish.com. It is much cheaper than is shown on Amazon. Indypublish.com does not sell direct to the public.

• Don't read the introduction. You'll see why in a bit.

Warning: There are plot spoilers in the text and links below. Be careful what you read as it might ruin a pretty good book!

---

Hi Mike,

This is long overdue and I sincerely apologize for that delay.

I have been (and to a large extent remain) unsure how to respond to this particular book. Therefore, I'll give you what I've got and hope to remain relatively unembarrassed by my omissions. My emissions (written...not the other ones) are embarrassing enough.

1) "On the Eve" was a pleasant read. I wasn't always sure of that conclusion. In fact, it was several weeks after I had moved on to the second book that I read afterwards that I finally came to that conclusion.

You may correctly infer from the above that I've read two books since completing "On the Eve" and have started a third.

Overall, I'd give it something between a 6 and a 7 on a 1-10 scale where 8-10 demands periodic re-reading and recommendation, and 4-6 is pleasurable enough, but likely to be forgotten in the mists of time.

2) One aspect that took me some time to get beyond is the perception that the characters and their milieu were somewhat contrived. What's that you say? All works of fiction are contrivances? Invented frameworks upon which authors hang their written tapestries?

Quite right. Many of my favorite books contain far less realistic contrivances. Yet the characters in "On the Eve" had a stilted quality. As if each had been designated to fulfill a stereotypical role. A modern vulgar simile would be the unnamed, red-shirted Star Trek crewman that inevitably dies while deployed on the ground party. The exception is that I clearly don't have the Russian literary or historical background to recognize the roles that the characters of "On the Eve" fill. At the least, roles that I imagine existing and therefore imagine them being filled.

My initial reaction was that these characters were being forced to associate in a way that real people of similarly disparate classes would never associate. How could one take seriously characters that are engaged in such an unreal life?

It wasn't until later when I considered other characters that I find more believable [Juan Rico from Heinlein's "Starship Troopers"; Huma [also] and Sturm Brightblade from the Dragonlance Chronicles series; Frodo, Bilbo, Gandolf, and Elrond; Roland Deschain of Gilead from King's "Dark Tower"; Harry Potter and friends] that I was then able to consider the story that Turgenev had to tell. While those other characters each are engaged in living as unreal of a life as one is liable to find, they also retain a familiar quality as if one might strip them of that which is unreal and still be left with an individual such as you might meet on the job, at a bar, or in your local church.

Turgenev's characters in "On the Eve" have a stilted quality that I would associate with opera, or a play. Perhaps the least stilted character was Bersenyev as he takes on the role of an observer of events rather than an person of action.

Or perhaps I possess an unseemly and ill advised familiarity with other fiction genres.

3) I fear that my inadequacies in the area of 19th century east European history may have also hampered my experience. While reading "On the Eve" I kept having an odd, sinking feeling that there were historical and cultural contexts with which I was unfamiliar and without which the story would never be anything more than the simple tale of an upper class girl discovering love of a coarser man of lesser standing.

4) I was unprepared for the darker, more fatalistic conclusion of "On the Eve". There was no uplifting message to be embraced at the end. No goodnight kiss and whispered promises of sunshine come the morn for the child wakened by dreams of things best undreamt.

Coincidentally, I rented the Russian movie "Night Watch" a few weeks after completing "On the Eve". "Night Watch" tells a more or less classic tale of the forces of eternal good battling eternal evil. The conclusion is not one most Americans would recognize. Rather than good finally conquering over evil, this movie concludes with evil winning out over good because good forgot to be....erm....good. With your experience in Russian literature, you may find this to be a movie that is worth your time.

5) One factor that I found disconcerting was the use of multiple names for the same character. This is somewhat ironic in that my most recent foray into writing begins with a character named "Wymond James 'Jonah' Freeman". [Wymond earned the nickname 'Jonah' after his submarine, the USS SFC Paul Ray Smith, was at sea testing a new type of broadband sonar that caused a herd of sperm whales to nearly sink his boat. An event that cost him his career despite his being ordered to conduct the test.]

Nonetheless, it took a while to figure out which names were attributed to which characters.

Another confusing factor is the pre-existing relationships between the characters. Specifically, the relationships between Shubin, Bersenyev & Anna are poorly explained beyond the fact that they know one another. Either that or I missed it. The latter not being completely unimaginable.

6) There were several themes within "On the Eve" that I found most enjoyable. The most predictable of these is our Bulgarian friend Insarov and his desire to free his nation from its oppressors. He possessed a simple, serious, passionate nature that I appreciated.

Another theme with which I could identify was the problem of Anna and her husband in dealing with an itinerant and willful daughter. The scene where Nikolai Stahov claims that a parent still has some rights and that he intended to call the police to see his rights respected was most amusing. Some things never change, do they?

The third theme that I appreciated was the devotion of Elena to her husband. Even though he had died in Venice and she could have safely and reasonably sent his body home to Bulgaria while she returned to Russia, Elena's love for her husband compelled her to believe in his cause, in his life, to the point where she was willing to go to Bulgaria and serve in his stead in whatever capacity she could find. It is a depth of emotion one seldom sees. Given my military background and the motivation of generations of Marines embodied by those that fought and died on the bloody shores of Tarawa during WWII, it is a depth of emotion that I fully appreciate.

7) You recommended this book after I asked what made Russian literature special enough that readers should seek it. After reading "On the Eve", I confess that I still have not found an adequate answer to that question. The language and writing were different from other genres with which I am more familiar. They weren't considerably better. Nor were they considerably worse. It was different in a way that does not inspire in me enthusiasm similar to that which you had when you made your original recommendation.

8) Finally, the introduction to the book fairly well spoiled it for me. The introduction included two themes to which I react poorly. The first theme was the suggestion that this book was a harbinger of great moments in Russian history that were yet to come. The second theme was that "On the Eve" was a great work of "art". IMO, there were precious few "great moments" in Russian history from the latter 19th century until the latter portion of 20th century. "Art" is a word that is much misused by those attempting to place obtuse or unworthy material beyond the criticism of the 'simple' masses.

Regards,

Dann

by Dann 

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Boy Crisis

Fred Reed is an absolute marvel to behold. Or at least he understands a few of our modern social problems with a clarity that borders on frightening.

"I can guess. Boys are churning wads of energy. They are physical and competitive. They want to climb things, test themselves, jump off of things, explore, drive fast, fight, behave like damn fools, and sack cities. In later years this energy may serve them well, but not yet. School is hellish for them, with its year after year of sitting, bored out of their skulls, while some drone babbles. It is worse for the bright, verging on child abuse. They hate it. I did.

Girls are more orderly, patient, accept rules with less resistance, and do their homework. They have better handwriting and cut pictures from magazines to paste into projects. They finish assignments on time. In general girls are easier to deal with, certainly for the female teachers who now are almost the only teachers."

The rest is worth your time.

by Dann 

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North Korea Is Seizing Trains

One of the over-arching themes of Ayn Rand's book "Atlas Shrugged" is the importance of the national rail system. In the book, successive waves of socialist legislation and regulation inevitably cause the quality and volume of steel being produced to decline to the point where freight can no longer be shipped via rail. Eventually, the economy completely fails when the last owner of a large business, a steel business, closes his plant and leaves the world.

Which makes the following from Strategypage all the more ironic:

"For example, food and fuel supplies sent to North Korea have been halted, not to force North Korea to stop missile tests or participate in peace talks, but to return the Chinese trains the aid was carried in on. In the last few weeks, the North Koreans have just kept the trains, sending the Chinese crews back across the border. North Korea just ignores Chinese demands that the trains be returned, and insists that the trains are part of the aid program. It's no secret that North Korean railroad stock is falling apart, after decades of poor maintenance and not much new equipment. Stealing Chinese trains is a typical loony-tune North Korean solution to the problem."

Ayn survived the depredations of the Soviet Union, so her perspective on the impact of socialism is not without a proper foundation. She has a great deal more to say in the book and it is well worth the considerable effort that it takes to get through it.

by Dann 

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