MY READING PROJECT PROGRESS

Some people look forward to retirement in order to travel or begin another career, to teach, or to accomplish some other long deferred dream. I have done all the traveling I wish to do and I would bore students by lecturing too much. I have been fulfilling a lifelong promise to myself – to read more, especially things I read or was supposed to read during my hurried and often wasted education that lasted for about twenty frustrating years. Now, I am reading those things — at least some of them, at least some parts of some of them to see if I should have paid more attention.

My bookcases are filled with paperbacks and hard covered books and I can’t afford the room to buy more. My brother still goes to the library. I don’t have the patience to wait for the ones I like to be returned. 

To be honest, I prefer the convenience of the Netflix model to the outmoded technology of lending, a la Blockbusters. With the benefit of modern technology — the e-book — I am able to continue my obsessive practice of reading several things at once, that is, jumping from one to another after a chapter or two of each. Since my preference is for non-fiction, this is feasible to do without forgetting the plot thread of my reading: history or biography books lose little in this manner. And there is an unexpected benefit — since my interests are fairly narrow — or at least conjoin in odd ways. I find that several things I read coincidentally make reference to happenings and characters in others. 
For instance, I am reading about Martha Gellhorn in a biography about her (“Gellhorn: An American Life” by Caroline Morehead) and also one about Lillian Hellman, (“Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life” by Dorothy Gallagher) which also mentions F. Scott Fitzgerald, as does a book about the writing of “The Great Gatsby,” which includes reference to “The Beautiful and Damned” and some events of 1927, which is the subject of “One Summer: America, 1927” by Bill Bryson. My fascination with the 1920's led me to Evelyn Waugh’s “Vile Bodies,” on which a movie, “Bright Young Things,” was based.

Even the fiction I am reading seems to correlate nicely with other reading: Eric Ambler’s classic, “A Coffin For Dimitrios” takes place in Turkey and the Balkans in the aftermath of World War I, also the setting of “A Peace To End All Peace,” by David Fromkin, a history of the fall of the Ottomans after World War I, which set the stage for the intrigues in the middle east. 

“Los Alamos” by Joseph Kanon is a mystery novel set during the Manhattan Project of World War II, also the subject of “Genius” Richard Feynman’s biography by James Glieck, and of course, “The Making Of The Atomic Bomb” by Richard Rhodes, which is more general and deeper about the same subject. 

Reading about Lincoln or, generally, about the Civil War, you have to come across some of the same anecdotes, characters, and sense of the man and the era. My latest reading includes a novel titled “I Am Abraham” by Jerome Charyn, which is in the first person as if written by Abe, admitting to us his human faults, fears, marital problems. It dovetails with the other recent book I found about him, “Lincoln the Lawyer” by Brian Dirck. Ever since I discovered that Lincoln had been a criminal trial lawyer who defended murderers, I have longed to discover more about that part of his career. My thesis is that his legal training and talent contributed largely to his rhetorical genius as well as his political and ethical ideas. I am finding support for that notion in my reading.

One of the first books I read during this search was James McPherson’s “Battle Cry of Freedom: the Civil War era.” It led to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best seller (one of the few best sellers I was drawn to) “Team of Rivals.” It was then a short jump back in time to “Manifest Destinies: America’s Westward Expansion and the Road to the Civil War” by Steven E. Woodworth. In all of these sources I was hoping to find support for my suspicion that Lincoln’s obsession about keeping the union together was influenced by his hope for a continental nation as a guarantee of peace and prosperity. 

I thought that our founding fathers were conscious of Europe as an example of the fractious nationalism that they were desperate to escape and to avoid for the nation they called by the name of the continent: America.  “Napoleon: A Biography” by Frank McLynn and “Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792-1914" by Geoffrey Wawro provided some evidence for this argument. 

What followed logically were a string of books about World War I. “The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War” by Peter Hall contains diary entries of many soldiers, generals and privates, relating the miseries of that war that was supposed to end war. The origins of that war are covered in “The Lost History of 1914" by Jack Beatty, which argues that there were many missed chances to avoid the war. It is a companion to my re-reading of Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August” and “The Zimmermann Telegram.” An alternative story about the same era is “To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918" in which the author, Adam Hochschild, documents that forgotten battles by conscientious objectors in England and Ireland who actively opposed the war. 

Reading the classics was also a goal. I began with Mark Twain, whose novels I have to confess were always difficult for me to get through in school. The dialect was part of it but mostly it was the mere fact that it was “assigned”. But now, I read “Huckleberry Finn” aloud to myself and loved it, laughed aloud many times and found the language to be subtle and appropriate to the often melancholy mood. 

On a roll, I decided to read “A Tale of Two Cities” and that worked, too. I always admired Sydney Carton as depicted by Ronald Colman in the movie. This character strikes me as a precursor of an anti-hero of later, noir type books of the Hammett and Chandler genre. I have “The Complete Works of Charles Dickens,” tentatively begun “Bleak House” but I am scared to death by the table of contents (thirty seven chapters?). 

Reading several Sherlock Holmes stories proved disappointing. Remembering the brilliant logic of the great detective that I enjoyed in my boyhood, I realized that the writing was of the dated “tell it don’t show it” school and the deductions were rather contrived.

Classics led me to Shakespeare’s complete works as well. I have always loved “Hamlet” and “Julius Caesar” and that led me to “Merchant of Venice” “Richard III,” “Macbeth” and “Romeo and Juliet.” I began “The Tempest” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” but haven’t yet been able to make much progress. I have learned that continuing this project demands some discipline, which in this context means abrupt detours from dead ends, maybe returning later (when the street is paved).

Movies have also influenced my reading. “Shakespeare in Love” inspired a look back at the play it plays with, and in reverse, re-reading “Macbeth” made me watch and enjoy Polanski’s movie. PBS presented the “Henry Trilogy: Henry IV, Part I & II, and Henry V” which led me back to better follow the plays. 

My enjoyment of history and movies got me into “Master and Commander” and “Post Captain” by Patrick O’Brien which reminded me of “Horatio Hornblower” which I loved when my mother took me to see it at Radio City Music Hall when I was ten. The movie “Troy” encouraged me to re-read “The Iliad” and a companion critique, “The War That Killed Achilles: The True Story of Homer’s Iliad and the Trojan War” bu Caroline Alexander, which elucidated the classic poem as an anti-war epic rather than one which glorifies the idea of war.

The movie, “The Good German,” led me to the book on which it was based, written by Joseph Kanon. It’s “Casablanca”-like story about World War II and the search for Nazi scientists at the start of the Cold War re-stimulated my interest in that era. I read “Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945" by Max Hastings, “The Nuremberg Trial” by John and Ann Tura. This led me to “The Brigade” by Howard Blum, which is about Jews who fought the Nazis. As I mentioned, another Kanon novel, “Los Alamos,” reminded me about Richard Feynman.   

On the subject of the holocaust, I read Deborah E. Lipstadt’s “The Eichmann Trial” (partly due to my nephew Max’s discussion about the book about her libel trial that he adapted for a possible movie). That led me recently to read a novel by Robert Harris, “An Officer and a Spy” which relates the story of Major Picquard’s exposure of the truth in the Dreyfus Affair (the overview of which I had read in Tuchman’s “The Proud Tower.” 

Jewishness led me to curiosity about the history of “Jerusalem” by Simon Sebag Montefiore and “Zealot: the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth” by Reza Aslan. In something of a circular trip, I began “FDR and the Jews” by Richard Breitman and “Hollywood and Hitler: 1933-1939" by Thomas Doherty, all of which cover the general subject of the origins and effects of anti-Semitism. 

My fascination with films also tempted me to read biographies of “Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations” by Peter Evans; and “Jean Arthur: the actress nobody knew” by John Oller. Re-reading “Catch-22" led me to “Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here” a memoir by Joseph Heller of his childhood in my old neighborhood. Other biographies I have tried include “J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets” by Curt Gentry and “A Perfect Spy: a novel” by John LeCarre, which is autobiographical. “Churchill” by Paul Johnson (as well as Churchill’s own “the Gathering Storm”).

One unique novel was “Jack 1939" by Francine Mathews, which imagines the college student Jack Kennedy as a spy for FDR in Hitler’s Germany. Another book on which a movie was based: “A Most Dangerous Method” by John Kerr, delves into the origins of psychiatry with Freud and Jung. “Lady At The O.K. Corral” by Ann Kirschner explores the lives of Wyatt Earp and his “wife / mistress” Josephine Marcus. “Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight” by Bingham & Wallace, covers the Supreme Court’s ruling in his draft problem. 

World War II also provided the fascinating story of three American generals: “Brothers, Rivals, Victors” by Jonathan W. Jordan. My interest in Paris and World War II and crime led me to a fascinating novel / memoir about the search for a murderer in occupied Paris, “Death In The City Of Light” by David King. That also led me to “Brave Genius: by Susan Carroll, which chronicles the story of Albert Camus and Jacques Monod, two friends who worked for the resistance and later won Nobel Prizes in their fields. 

Crime and noir genre stories have always attracted my attention. I re-read favorites, “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Big Sleep” along with “Farewell, My Lovely.” I also discovered Jim Thompson, reading “A Swell Looking Babe,” “The Getaway,” :The Grifters” and “Pop. 1280" to which I added my Netflix access for the movies that were based on these novels. Another Eric Ambler thriller, “Journey Into Fear” was basis of a classic film (directed by Orson Welles, starring Joseph Cotten). I re-read “Casino Royale” by Ian Fleming to remind me about the pleasure of reading about 007 instead of watching a parade of CGI explosions.

      At Greg's urging, I began "Cryptonomicon" by Neil Stephenson, but find it tough sledding. Like some other contemporary writers, Michael Chabon being another, I have trouble with the style. I was reared spoiled by writers who stick to a far more economical narrative technique. But I will keep at it.