In his Outline of History (1920) H. G Wells wrote that ‘Civilisation is in a race between education and catastrophe.’*
Catastrophe is winning.
After one hundred and fifty years of free public education, the Enlightenment project seems to be spent. Instead of reason and evidence, even ostensibly educated people celebrate, parade, and worship passion. Emotions are regarded as superior to reason. Thus I have oft heard that it is praise to say a scientist is passionate, whereas I would prefer a scientist to be cool and detached, letting the facts and evidence lead to the conclusions, not the emotions. Ditto for journalists, doctors, teachers, and ambulance drivers and more. But no, they are congratulated for passion not competence, discipline, restraint, diligence, tenacity, skepticism, preparation, endurance, and the like.
To say someone is competent, knowledgeable, effective, precise, industrious, or professional is faint praise compared to attributing passion.
Indeed the self-advertising of universities follows the crowd, touting passion not perfection, belief not doubt in proclaiming their virtues.
Emotional reactions are simple, binary, as when cheering on a sporting team. These days even the self-appointed newspapers of record, having forsaken the historic mission of public edification, put sports figures and celebrities on the front page in the vein attempt to hook buyers and readers by passions, not by information, insight, knowledge, or long and slowly accumulated intelligence that came from sitting still and reading or patiently listening. Favoured instead is the direct intuition of passion.
Press that button!
The White School House at Corning Iowa last time I saw it.
Admittedly education itself has changed in that century and a half. In the last two generations in a comfort born of the sacrifices of others, the denizens of higher education have largely devoted themselves to undermining the Enlightenment project, while enjoying its benefits, and they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams and passed that on to their students who have gone on to become school teachers, parents, journalists, and community leaders. Witness the world they have made today in Whitehall and the White House where volume and repetition have replaced facts and evidence. Passionately saying it is so now makes it so.
Intellectuals were the first to find facts irrelevant and spread the word in seminars, lectures, and books. The word has spread and now grows of itself. Truth is no longer privileged. This I have been told for years in seminars, conferences, and theses. All knowledge is tainted. Everything is opinion. (See Plato’s Republic Book Ten.)
*If some smartypants out there could supply the volume and page numbers I will thank them personally.
GoodReads meta-data is 278 pages, rated 3.68/5.00 by 28 litizens.
Genre: period krimi
Verdict: Nifty.
Edna Ferber (1885-1958) and firebrand, fictional suffragette Winifred Moss are travelling in Budapest in 1914. The trip is R and R for Suffragette after a gruelling period of arrest and torture in London, while Edna is escaping her cloying mother, ensconced in Berlin. From Kalamazoo, Ferber’s parents were Jewish, one Hungarian and one German, thus she travels with the languages for Mitteleuropa.
With its hotel upstairs featuring English plumbing the threadbare but comfortable Café Europa is favoured by English-speaking travellers. It is likewise convenient to the sights and sites of Buda (though few figure in this story apart from the Chain Bridge and the Castle).
In act one The Travellers observe the betrothal of a young American heiress to a sclerotic Austrian count. She previously had been courted by a dashing Hungarian, a scion of a porcelain fortune, but her parents arranged a marriage to the count, who is supremely indifferent to the whole matter, but his mother is the match-maker on that side. The American parents want the marriage to get the lustre of aristocracy, while the mother wants the gelt. The girl does not seem to mind but acts like the spoiled child she is. It is all very Edith Wharton [without her subtlety], until…..
The bratty heiress is murdered in the garden at midnight! Who dun it?
Act two opens with the local plod Hovarth investigating only to be pushed aside by a bumptious, idiot from Vienna who must arrest someone to satisfy aristocratic pressure. Neither the parents nor the match-making mother seem to care about the dead girl, but both parties are embarrassed by her murder. Talk about blame the victim.
Act three sees the murder of another American tourist: Buzzing around from the beginning is an annoying Hearst journalist named Harold. He goes here and there stirring and sewing sensationalism, malice, and half-truths. Think Pox News with energy and there it is. Harold differs from Pox journalism in having a certain puppy charm. Then Harold is shot dead in the street.
Act four: Meanwhile, Edna and Suffragette fall in with some local artists, reluctantly.
After much to’ing and fro’ing the cast gathers, ostensibly, in a wake, but we know the denouement is coming at 90% on the Kindle. We know this because, deus ex machina, while falling sleep the night before Edna and says to herself and the inevitable portrait of Emperor Franz Jozef on the wall in her hotel room: ‘That’s it!’
Act five offers an explanation of sorts: It turns out the murder….. Whoops, Spoiler ahead, take warning! Everything is political. Brat’s father is not only rich, stupid, and vain, he is also the owner of Colt Firearms and a matrimonial union with the Austrian Empire would feed the weapons to its army. Yes, it is a long bow, but there you have it. The best way to scuttle the union is to murder her. Sure makes sense. But then, maybe that sort of thing does to some tiny minds.
Harold of Hearst had begun to figure it out, and so he also had to go. Bang!
Spoiler. In keeping with the great tradition of krimis the murderer is the least likely, the seemingly gawky busboy, who is in fact a thespian terrorist. Another long bow.
The hindsight is thick throughout, everyone knows war is coming, quite how they could be so sure is left to one’s imagination when so many others, including many of the decision-makers, were taken by surprise. It was made fact by repetition. There had many conflicts in the Balkans already and another was perhaps inevitable, but the prescience in these pages anticipates the Great War not another armed border dispute.
The multiple-sclerosis of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is well done. Everywhere is the picture of Franz Jozef, Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, and monarch of many other constituent polities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and once President of the German Confederation, yet the regime is comatose. He leads his peoples in clinging to the past. He will not promote to general a soldier less than seventy years old, only if all eight grandparents were themselves nobility may one enter the court circle at the Hofburg, telephones are forbidden in imperial buildings, he has never ridden in an automobile, though aged he ascends six flights of stairs each night to his army cot rather than have a new-fangled elevator installed. Electricity is banned from official buildings. He favours only those who do the same.
Yet in Paris, in London, in Berlin modernity is bursting out in all forms, electricity, automobiles, telephones, jazz, dance, short skirts, women smoking – none of these practices are permitted in the K and K (for King and Emperor) lands. French, English, and German armies are promoting young officers with technical educations and embracing new weapons and tactics, while in K and K the cavalry sabre remains the ultimate weapon.
The descriptions of the modern art as a revolution itself, destroying the old order, are very well done and quite arresting. Even the Hearst hack is conscious of something in the art he sees, though he cannot articulate it and it does not delay him long from the spoor of cheap sensationalism.
While thinking Edna and Suffragette drink Bulls Blood wine. During our recent visit to Budapest, I asked about this very wine, recalling its role in completing the PhD dissertation long ago. The vintner said it was an export label first applied to vast quantities of red wine Hungary traded to the Soviet Union in return for oil in the 1960s. It would seem that the Soviets then bottled it and traded it to Canada for wheat. In turn I traded it for words at the typewriter. Yes, I know, there are extensive entries for it on the web but if read closely, they do not contradict the essence of the intel above.
Ed Ifkovic
Edna Ferber had a long and distinguished career as a writer, novelist, playwright, and essayist. This is the sixth in a series featuring her.
William Rufus KING was a Vice President of the USA? True or False.
True. Briefly.
When? 1853. Yes only in that year, but not the whole year. Considerably less than twelve months.
From Alabama, he was New Hampshireman Franklin Pierce’s Democratic running mate in the 1852 election. Though the two did not meet during the nomination or campaign. Uh? Yep and there is more, or rather less.
In 1852 to give geographic balance to the New Englander heading the ticket, King was nominated in absentia, having travelled to the hot and humid climate of Cuba for his health. (Maybe he should have gotten a second opinion.) After the Democratic ticket won, a special act of Congress allowed King to take the Vice-President’s oath of office at the US consulate in Havana on 24 March 1853. A little later he returned to his home in Alabama and died there on 18 April 1853; he was Vice President for little more than three weeks, none of it spent in Washington D.C. He must have the title for the shortest VP term, though John Tyler is often credited with that. Tuberculosis was the killer, perhaps to make a comeback aided by anti-vaxxers near and far.
Pedants note. The Wikipedia entry credits him with forty-five days in office, longer than Tyler as above. How that number is arrived at given he took the oath on 24 March and died on 18 April is one of the mysteries of WikiWars. In the Wikipedia text he is credited with holding the office from 4 March (when President Pierce took the oath) though the text also clearly states King did not swear the oath until the 24th of March because he had not been in D.C. on 4 March. Members of Pedants United (PU) are sure that he was only VP after he took the oath, not when the office was vacated, or when Pierce was sworn in. Those who agree may tell anyone they please.
I first came across this spectral Vice President reading a biography of Franklin Pierce, discussed elsewhere on this blog for avid clickers.
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 12 minutes, rated 7.1/10.0 by 8062 cinematizens
Verdict: In the beginning.
The Set-up: Monsoon rains in Wales wash out roads and lead two separate travelling parties to pitch up at the Old Dark House of the Femm family. If only the travellers had been able to read the map where it said ‘Do Not Stop Here.’ But it was too wet, too dark, and the director was in too much of hurry for that warning.
You rang?
There they find the hirsute, mute butler, Frankestein’s monster, moonlighting in a second job. Melvyn Douglas wise cracks; Raymond Massey looks serious; Lillian Bond just looks as does the very talented Gloria Stuart (of Titanic) in this pre-Code film; but Charles Laughton has the best part and plays it superbly. Then there are the cross-dressing Femms, Horace, Rebecca, Saul, and Roderick engaged in a race to the nut house.
Enthusiasts for creepy old dark houses, ahem, like me, are in for a disappointment. There are no secret passages (from which chain saw wielding cats leap), no sliding panels (to reveal a torture chamber), no peep holes (through which to see terrible sights, like a Republican), nor does anyone flounce around in a cape (the most common ensemble for villains in Old Dark Houses).
On the other hand, the Femms do provide compensations. Horace jumps every time someone scratches. Rebecca screeches denunciations of all as sinners. Roderick is the cross-dresser. Saul likes fire. Lots of it.
We never do find out anything about the travellers and they all survive the night to continue being unknown though in a slightly different configuration. In these days Douglas often played the wise-cracking wastrel, belying his later, memorable dramatic roles.
Potato any one?
Gloria Stuart before taking passage on the Titanic
James Whale of Frankenstein directed, wasting Boris Karloff behind some hairy make-up, from the novel Benighted (1927) by J.B. Priestly; the screenplay closely follows the book. Among the nice touches are many visuals, nobody can open a door like Frankenstein’s monster, or the split mirrors before Gloria Stuart, the shadows on the dining room wall, and never did the phrase ‘Have a potato!’ seem so strange. By comparison the Hammer remake in 1963 is a toga party.
Robin Bailes, The Vengeance of the Invisible Man (2019)
Good Reads meta-data is pages 236 rated 0.0 by 0 litizens. (Lazy sods!)
Genre: krimi, academic
Verdict: Whoa! I did not see that coming.
Recovering from her Mummy’s Quest (2018) adventures in Egypt, Amelia has been digging in Romania. Romania! Yes, Rumania in the Carpathian mountains. Seems there are pictographs there, too, for her to interpret. In anticipation of Christmas she has returned to Cambridge and her sister, the high powered Zit who talks a mile-a-minute while running hither and yon. She is loud, full tilt, and one-dimensional, contrast to the shintrovert Amelia.*
Zit’s publishing firm is bringing out a work of fiction – Memoirs of an Invisible Man. In short order, the question becomes ‘Is it non-fiction?’ because strange things start to happen. The author does not show up at the book launch, but the books go flying through the air. Sales follow. There are several other public displays of the invisibility – a pair of empty trousers dance through Christmas shoppers, and so on. Nothing that would be noticed on King Street in Newtown.
The sensation hungry media adds to the fire garnishing invisibility with hyperbole. Sales continue to soar. Zit loves the sales but cannot communicate with the author, still less set KPIs. All of this intrigues Amelia, who read the manuscript and found it poignant, even moving, whereas, compliant with her McKinsey training all Zit sees only £’s.
In a parallel track professors two in Cambridge fastness have been strangled in locked rooms. Were they victims of collegial animosity. Well, as a matter of fact….. [But that would be telling].
Plod Harrigan applies the acids of questions, shoe leather, and patience to crack the case much to the fury of his superior who wants RESULTS! NOW! Bullying subordinates is certainly a chapter in the McKinsey Management Manual these days. Nonetheless, as he nears retirement Harrigan keeps on keeping on, despite the badgering, er hmm, management of his superior. Loved Harrigan’s musings about his last words, and pleased he did not need them.
Meanwhile, Amelia connects the dots between the murders and the invisible man. Seems obvious, and yet there are surprises to come. Believe me: I was surprised. Of course, they are connected but not in the way I expected.
A victim of her own curiosity, Amelia gets in the way and has a brush with the invisible one that frightens her into contacting Universal (see The Mummy Quest, reviewed elsewhere on the blog, for an explanation). She expected [sigh] the suave, dashing, handsome Boris to come to her rescue. Instead, thanks to the duty roster, she gets the short, unsympathetic, and dowdy Elsa who saves her neck more than once with a willingness to believe the unbelievable and a resourcefulness honed from previous encounters with the unbelievable.
In the midst of all this Amelia meets a man who does take her seriously and she him, but fitting courtship into a schedule dominated by the unbelievable is difficult. This romance is charming, but it does slow the action.
There are references to the formidable Maggie at the start and finish, but I was disappointed she did not put in an appearance. She just about stole the show in Egypt. The crystal ball suggests that she will figure in the next title in the series that will take us to Nosferatu country.
There are many great lines in what is essentially a screenplay. Elsa says that in her experience the dividing line between the living and the dead is a grey area. There are more where that came from. Read on.
Razor-tongued Robin Bailes (host of My Dark Corner of this Sick World to be found on You Tube) cannot be stopped, and in this one he comprehensively outsmarted this jaded reader with the double-barrelled plot. It brings together many threads from the cinematic suite of invisible man films discussed elsewhere on this blog. This is the third book in Bailes’s series, and the best for my AUD $4.95 on Kindle. Very clever. Chapeux!
*Shintrovert is a shy introvert, a term coined by Jessica Pan in Sorry I am late, I didn’t want to come (2017) discussed elsewhere on this blog. Do try to keep up.
Multi-lingual Brit secret service agent Bernhard Newman is rambling through the Vosges Mountains on his honeymoon, when….. Because of his experience in ferreting out German spies, Papa Pontivy, head of the French Deuxième Bureau, asks for his help. In the inner sanctum of a fort on the Maginot Line a dead body has been found. That is bad. Here is what is worse. The deadman is unidentified. Worse. Worst: he was shot dead but no one heard anything. Oh, and the corpse was naked and disfigured, to prevent identification it seems. How is it that no one noticed all of this in the claustrophobic confines of the underground fort?
How did a stranger penetrate the many defences of a Maginot Line redoubt? Sacré bleu! How did he do so in secret? How did someone else kill him without leaving a trace? All good questions.
After a tour of the fortifications Newman goes about his honeymoon business….ahem. And Papa Pontivy takes over. He disregards evidence and relies on his numerous instincts. Gallic though he may be he does not practice the Cartesian method, which in general is to accept nothing as true until verified beyond doubt, to divide the problem into its smallest components, to take each component in turn, to start with the easiest and (re)solve it and then on to the next. To make enumeration complete and reviews general so that nothing is omitted. Pops does none of this.
Thereafter the novel violates most rules of fiction. It divides the action and the narrative voice. Newman leaves. Pontivy takes over insisting on his instinct, which by the way make no sense but reference to his instinct is constantly repeated to the point where I agree with one of the characters who says to him, ‘I am tired of hearing about your instinct!’ Amen, brother! He then goes to Brittany which his instincts tell him is the key to the Line. He does not bother to look at a map, but relies on the writer to prove him right.
This instinct that he cannot stop talking about when Newman says a Captain seems to have recognised him (Newman). That sets Pontivy off but it is not his perception at all but Newman’s. And even that makes no sense since the Captain certainly recognised him since he had earlier encountered him in the woods and marched Newman in to explain himself. One rule for writing fiction is, I know, write fast and do not read what is written. This author applied that rule to the hilt. I kept going because of the few details about the Maginot Line, but as a krimi it is tedious.
Bernard Newman (1897-1968) was a prolific author. He had been a liaison officer with French forces during World War I. After this war he travelled widely in Europe on a bicycle. He was in France in May 1940 and saw for himself the onset of the German invasion. He often made himself the protagonist in his novels as above.
Bernard Newman
His oeuvre includes travelogues, spy stories, science fiction, and journalism. His The Blue Ants (1952) described a nuclear war between Russia and China set in 1970. There are nearly a hundred titles in all listed in the Wikipedia entry. Some have been re-issued in a Kindle format. Probably not for me.
Confession. As a boy the encyclopaedia we had at home featured an extensive entry on the Maginot Line which fascinated me. Later I appreciated the political and social aspects of this engineering feat, and that added an informed layer of interest. André Maginot had served in the trenches at Verdun in World War I and he marched with veterans at the consecration of the tomb of the unknown solider in the Arc de Triomphe after the war. He entered politics to prevent another blood bath, and when he was invited to join a cabinet he wanted Defence so he could build that wall that later bore his name, though it was never officially named.
There were two major military reactions to the bloody stalemate of trench warfare in World War I. One was to turn to mobility in tanks, trucks, motorcycles, and air planes. Proponents of mobility included Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle, both of whom had also been in the trenches, and also Erwin Rommel who had practiced mobility on the Italian front in World War I. But Churchill and de Gaulle were marginalised in the post-war politics.
The second response was to build impregnable trenches under nine feet of steel and concrete which itself was under tons of earth. Maginot was one who responded in that way, but more importantly so was Phillip Pétain, the defender of Verdun, and his word was law on military matters because of the sacrifices at Verdun, birthplace of Jean d’Arc. This was an effort to learn lessons taught in blood.
Most of the lore about the Maginot Line is mistaken, like most lore. It did not continue along the Belgian border because the Belgians vigorously objected to that, and claimed that their neutrality would be respected, and if not, then their own Albert Line would suffice. In either case no unnamed (German) invader would threaten France through Belgium. When came the test, the Albert Line was breached in a few hours – it had been built by the lowest bidder, a German firm that turned over all the plans to the Wehrmacht. That may sound dumb. So does contracting with Chinese-owned firms for defence computers but we do that right in the wide brown land. Nonetheless, Maginot was determined to continue the Line to the coast, but he ran out of money and because of the Depression he ran out of political support. One of the reasons the Germans attacked when they did, was to strike before the Line reached the coast. Where it was tested in the South, it proved impervious to Italian attacks.
The Maginot Line was built:
To prevent a German surprise attack.
To slow a cross-border assault.
To protect Alsace and Lorraine.
To save manpower. (Recall that Germany had twice the population of France.)
To allow time for the mobilisation of the French Army..
To be used as a basis for a counter-offensive.
To invite Germany to circumvent the Line by violating the neutrality of Switzerland or Belgium which would galvanise world opinion against it, and it would also make the field of combat those countries and not France itself.
In the polarised whirlwind of the Third Republic, the French general staff forgot its own strategy and spread men and material along the Line so that there was no concentration and in a crisis none would be possible. Consequently, the Line was fully manned, leaving no troops in reserve for such a counter-attack.
I read this novel years ago in the Fisher Library copy. It has not improved with age.
Not to be confused with Double crime sur la ligne Maginot (1937), a film that depicts a love triangle among officers in the Line and offers so many images of the formidable Line and hundreds of troops that it must have been made with the cooperation of the army, perhaps as propaganda to show how great the Line was. In the event, German agents were the villains. There is a version of it on You Tube, and it is dead boring.
