Category: Book Review

Good Reads meta-data is 368 pages rated 4.28 by 72 litizens.

Genre: Biography.

DNA: Academic.

Verdict: The anti-platonic Plato.

Tagline: He kept all of receipts.

Focus is in the title, that is, Plato’s on-again, off-again relationship with the tyrant father and son, Dionysius the Elder and the Younger of Syracuse on Sicily.  Before going on please note, that in Greek the word ‘tyrant’ meant a ruler who was not hereditary. Because Herodotus’ account of the Persian Wars looked east (as did Alexander the Great later in retaliation), and much of Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War concentrated on the Greek peninsula and the east, with the exception of the catastrophe at this very same Syracuse in earlier times when it was a democracy. In contrast, the extensive Greek settlements in the western Mediterranean are not as well documented and known.  But Greek colonies populated southern Italy, Sicily, Marseilles in France, as far as Cadiz in Spain.  

The greatest single power among the Western Greeks was Syracuse. It had wealth from silver and gold, and large population compared to many other cities. Its double harbour gave it an advantage in sea trade.  And it had, by the time the Dionysius two ruled, a formidable military reputation after having defeated that Athenian invasion in the Peloponnesian War.  

Plato went to Syracuse – a long and expensive voyage with some risks from weather and pirates – three times over two decades.  He did so, when the smoke and mirrors of scholarship have been exhausted, to encourage the ruler(s) of Syracuse to exercise moderation.  He hoped to convert a ruler to think of the whole in the long term against the highest and most abstract standard.  The Dionysii were infamous for their cruelty, debauchery, hedonism, and worse, but Plato decided he could but try, despite the apparent odds.  The Elder was cruel and rapacious but liked to have trophy wives, slaves, and intellectuals in his entourage. The Younger was vain, selfish, and debauched by food, drink, and sex. Not promising ground then, but Plato had a student of old at court, one Dion who was wealthy and an in-law of the Dionysii to pave the way for him.  So Plato tried and tried again, and again.  To no avail.  

These efforts have long fascinated Platonists and much has been written about them over the centuries. The author’s mastery of this multi-lingual literature is impressive. Very. Intriguing also to learn Twenty-First century efforts to apply MRI technology to reading carbonised scrolls destroyed/preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.  

Instead of admiring Plato for dirtying his hands, even risking his life, and trying to redeem the tyrants (and thereby lighten their yoke on the people of Syracuse), he is indicted for interfering by hindsight moralists. But he did little more than advise moderation. Does make him liable for what followed. It seems so since he is routinely arraigned as an accessory.   

I first read of this story in Mary Renaut’s novelThe Mask of Apollo (1954) when I was an graduate student. It was recommended to me by someone whose identity has by now escaped me. Perhaps I will re-read that.  We will see. 

Awhile ago I read and commented on a book the front cover of which declared it to be a biography of Plato.  It was a very well done account of the history of his time and place, but not a biography of the man.  Ergo, I was still in the market for a biography and when Howard Whitton sent me a review of this book, I had a look, and it promised some more biography.  This is another excellent study that tries to bring out the biographical echoes in Plato’s essays, particularly Republic.

A few months ago I read and commented on a Straussian study of Plato’s thirteen letters (Ariel Helfer, Plato’s Letters [2023]) that….  That entry is elsewhere on this blog for clickers. Well, Straussians make a lot out of little or nothing.  If aboriginal stargazers concentrated on the black areas of the sky rather than the stars, Straussians concentrate on what it absent; silence; what is not said.  Of course, there is a lot of nothing, right Jean-Paul? And you can make it mean whatever you want want.  

Long ago I read Ludwig Marcuse, Plato and Dionysius: a Double Biography (1947) and learned nothing about either of them from it.  

Good Reads meta-data is 146 pages, rated 3.11 by 193 litizens

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict: Kept me guessing.

Tagline: ‘Gulp!’

The briefings for the 1942 Operation Torch included everything but an encounter with an alien or a trip in its craft (forward a billion years or so in time).  Two Allied agents on a secret mission behind enemy lines in Tunisia meet two Germans on a similar quest but before they can kill each other and be done with it by page 10, there is that presence against which they, hesitantly combine forces.

It is the usual suspects in this motley crew, a Scots scientist, an upper-lip-stiffed Brit, a crazed Nasty, and a mercenary woman.  When they emerge from the craft they find a strange old world, and the strangeness is very well portrayed, as is the porcelain living doll they find there.  

Adventures follow. What they needed was Captain Future and the three Future Men (tricky though because none of the latter trio is a man).

Turns out ’47’ was the right answer. ‘729’ was a close second.

Both the aberrant strangeness of the alien and the old world are the best parts of the book.  I found it intriguing and diverting for a few hours. Though there were two women – one wily and one porcelain – in the story, both are ciphers, and disappear in the last two acts.  

The date 1 January refers to the publication of the first episode in a serial form of the novel only a few months after Operation Torch. 

Genre: Sy Fy: Species: Epic poem; subspecies: Blank verse. 

Good Reads meta-data is 157 pages, rated 3.85 by 3001 litizens. 

DNA: Sweden.

Verdict: 47.  

Tagline: Helvetet är andra människor.  (Hell is other people.)

This epic poem is the basis of an opera, and four films. Whew!  When the author was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 this volume was named as the second most important book published in Swedish. Double whew! The only Nobel Prize for SyFy, apart from those in economics.

What’s the story then?

Aniara, a routine shuttle carrying 8,000 people, lifts off for Mars from a despoiled Earth.  (‘I told you so,’ said Greta, again.) It is a three-week flight aboard this Volvo ferry with its casino, IKEA shopping maze, theatres, and other mod cons with 2000 rooms, each with an en suite bathroom(?).  Millions have taken this ride before.  But hardly has this one left Earth orbit for the jaunt when the unimaginative writer’s friend, a meteor shower, strikes.  The contractor who built Aniara did not anticipate such an occurrence and the ship is damaged. Like the mighty KM Bismarck, the Aniara’s rudder is mangled and the craft cannot be steered.  Instead it is thrown well off course toward the light-centuries distant Lyra constellation.

Pippi Longstocking, Max von Sydow’s knight, Inspector Beck, Björn Börg, Olof Palmé, Greta (not you know whom) Garbo, and other Swedish stereotypes are on board. The crew attempts repairs without success; nor is there is any emergency road service from Volvo for Aniara.  These 8000 are now condemned to live out their lives, as are their descendants, within this metallic shell on the way to Lyra where they will never arrive (because the ship itself will wither en route into a Marie Celeste hulk).  What meaning is there in this existential crisis?  See above.

(Was this the basis for StarLost in 1973.  Hope not. But it is a trope in a lot of SyFy before and after 1956 – the ark as coffin.)

In addition to all the other short term diversions the ferry has Mima with its minder.  What is Mima?  Mima is an AI as conceived in 1956. It is referred to in the same casual I might refer to my iMac, and so I can only guess what it is.  Mima is there to inform, entertain, educate, and pacify passengers during the short trip to Mars. It has a repository of tapes, both video and audio, but it also receives and intercepts transmissions from the ether, including from Earth. Intended to function mostly as a diversion for three weeks at a time, when left on continuously for the years of this journey it becomes increasingly self-conscious, and it is aware of the situation. It is sentient enough to realise the hopeless situation even as it itself wears out, those flash drives and circuit boards are not immortal, and Mima is sentient enough to feel dread of the darkness to come.  The minder became the central character in the two film versions I have seen.  

So for the first few months or even years Mima keeps up a happy face, but like Grock the clown Mima grows melancholy as it ages and becomes decrepit. The CDs wear out from repeated spins.  It receives incomprehensible transmissions, perhaps from alien beings. It loses contact with dying Earth long before all that.  

(Note to self: turn off Dexter, iMac, before it becomes sentient.)

Mima mirrors the hopes of the passengers and as this robot loses hope, so do they, or vice versa.  On board the population re-enacts much of the stupidity of life on Earth. There is wasteful use of resources that seem to be infinite on the Aniara.  Salvation cults come and go. Orange demigods strut and fret. First there is unlimited orgy followed by celibacy. Human sacrifice was a short-lived fad. (Get it?) Through it all the Aniara drifts on.  

***

It is partly a take on a common Cold War setting of mixed group of survivors of a nuclear war, having to deal with each other. e.g., Five (1951), Day the World Ended (1955), On the Beach (1959), This is not a Test (1962), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), and many more.  This trope has since been done to death and well past that in the Post-Apocalyptic genre that has exploded in recent times.  But in this case not one of the passengers is a distinctive personalities. 

Good Reads meta-data is 274 pages, rated 3.90 by 7130 litizens.

Genre: Krimi.

DNA: Italy

Verdict: Nolo contendere.

Tagline:  Proving what might not have happened. (Yeah, not punchy.) 

When a young boy is found dead near a beach resort one of the usual suspects is arrested and fitted to the crime. Being a Senegalese peddler, the racial stereotypes in the court of public opinion have him convicted before the handcuffs go on.

Hero reluctantly gets involuntarily involved and slowly picks apart the circumstantial case against Peddler.  There is much insider detail about the judiciary, the judicial system, and policing in Bari, way down south.  The telling is smooth and packed with asides into the humanity of all involved, though mostly that of the lawyer, though not of the police officers who do have a cardboard quality.  

The main events are in the court room where Hero casts doubt on the certainties of the prosecution. The means by which that is done is fascinating, a seminar in defence by obfuscation.  There is a very great deal of talk. One defence summation is timed at more than two-hours.  Could the judges, let alone a jury, cope with that much exposition?  (Many social-psychology experiments conclude that a person’s attention span is no more than 20 minutes at a time.) They must have been made of stern stuff and elastic bladders because I am sure students could not withstand a 2 1/2 passive lecture. 

Along the way we learn much about the lawyer, his life, his loves, his habits, his car…[TMI].  On the other hand we learn only a little about the Senegalese peddler, apart from the facts that he is a legal immigrant, multi-lingual, and – spoiler – maybe innocent of the alleged crime.  That is another thing we do not learn, who committed the crime, how, and why. This story does not follow that Perry Mason trope, that the best way to prove a client innocent is to find the guilty party.  

I said ‘maybe’ above because I was not quite sure what I was supposed to think. Nor was I sure whether the police officers’ superficial effort was (1) to calm public opinion with a quick arrest or (2) if they really believed he was guilty, but (3) were too lazy to make a proper investigation, (4) because his being black was sufficient for conviction.  Whoops there I go again tying myself into knots over nothing. 

Also under the heading of unknown is what lawyer had to say to his ex-wife that was so important.  OK, may I blinked.  

This is the first in a series by the author, a retired judge who managed a number of mafia trials, and lived to write these tales unlike some others.  Both are major achievements.  

Harry Martinson, Aniara (1956).

Genre: Sy Fy: Species: Epic poem; subspecies: Blank verse. 

Good Reads meta-data is 157 pages, rated 3.85 by 3001 citizen’s.  

DNA: Sweden.

Verdict: 47.  

Tagline: Helvetet är andra människor.  (Hell is other people.)

The basis for an opera, and four films. Whew!  Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 for being the second most important book published in Swedish. Double whew! The only Nobel Prize for SyFy, apart from those in economics.

What’s the story then?

Aniara, a routine shuttle carrying 8,000 people, lifts off for Mars from a despoiled Earth.  (‘I told you so,’ said Greta, again.) It is a three-week flight aboard this Volvo ferry with its casino, IKEA shopping mall, theatres, and such mod cons with 2000 rooms each with an en suite bathroom(?).  Millions have taken this ride before.  But hardly has this one left Earth orbit for the jaunt when the unimaginative writer’s friend, a meteor shower, strikes.  The contractor who built Aniara did not anticipate such an occurrence and the ship is damaged. Like the mighty Bismarck, the Aniara’s rudder is mangled and the craft cannot be steered.  Instead it is thrown well off course toward the light-centuries distant Lyra constellation.

Pippi Longstocking, Max von Sydow’s knight, Inspector Beck and other Swedish stereotypes are on board. The crew attempts repairs to no avail, and there is no emergency road service from Volvo for Aniara.  These 8000 are condemned to live out their lives, as are their descendants, within this metallic shell on the way to Lyra where they will never arrive (because the ship itself will wither en route into a Marie Celeste hulk).  What meaning is there in this existential crisis?  See above.

(Was this the basis for StarLost in 1973.  Hope not. But it is a trope in a lot of SyFy before and after 1956.)

In addition to all the other short term diversions the ferry has Mima with its minder.  What is Mima?  Mima is an AI as conceived in 1956. It is referred to in the same casual I might refer to my iMac, and so I can only guess what it is.  Mima is there to inform, entertain, educate, and pacify passengers during the short trip to Mars. It has a repository of tapes, both video and audio, but it also receives and intercepts transmissions from the ether, including from Earth. Intended to function mostly as a diversion for three weeks at a time, when left on continuously for the years of this journey it becomes increasingly self-conscious, and it is aware of the situation. It is sentient enough to realise the hopeless situation even as it itself wears out, those flash drives and circuit boards don’t last forever, and sentient enough to feel dread of the darkness to come.  The minder became the central character in the two film versions I have seen.  

So for the first few months or even years Mima keeps up a happy face, but like Grock the clown it grows melancholy as it ages and becomes decrepit.  The CDs wear out from repeated spins.  It receives incomprehensible transmissions, perhaps from alien beings.  It loses contact with dying Earth long before all that.  

(Note to self: turn off iMac before it becomes sentient.)

Mima mirrors the hopes of the passengers and as this robot loses hope, so do they, or vice versa.  On board the population re-enacts much of the stupidity of life on Earth. There is wasteful use of resources that are not infinite on Aniara.  Salvation cults come and go. Orange demigods strut and fret. First there is unlimited orgy followed by celibacy. Human sacrifice was a short-lived fad. (Get it?) Through it all Aniara drifts on.  

While we learn much of Mima’s moods, the passengers keep eating and drinking.  Those supplies seem infinite for this three week crossing which has stretched to more than twenty years within a few pages.  

It is partly a take on a common Cold War setting of mixed group of survivors of a nuclear war, having to deal with each other. e.g., Five (1951), Day the World Ended (1955), On the Beach (1959), This is not a Test (1962), The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) and many more.  This trope has since been done to death and well past that in the Post-Apocalyptic genre that has exploded in recent times.  But in this case none of the passengers are distinctive personalities. 

C. L. Moore, ‘No Woman Born’ (1944).

Good Reads meta-data is 40 pages, rated 3.87 by 101 litizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

DNA: USA.

Verdict: Thoughtful.

Tagline: Abandon clichés all who read here.  

A diva who was horribly disfigured and mutilated in a theatre fire, slowly is recovered, that is, remade into…?  That is the question.  On the one hand her brain has been placed in an artificial body, say like MurderBot as discussed elsewhere on this blog.

In that way her life was saved by the heroic efforts of a team of doctors and technicians, but now, how shall she/it live? That is another question.  

A take on the mind/body problem, as well as personal identify and autonomy, especially for a woman.  Some of the Good Reads reviewers, as usual, entirely miss the point.  

A compelling if protracted story with an ending, happy or otherwise.  I heard it commended by Gary Wolfe in a Wondrium lecture and sought it out.  It took some seeking but I found it in a collection selling for $500 on Amazon and $5 on Abe Books.

Inspired by this reading I got another one of hers.  To dodge the sexism of the age, she often wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett or Lawrence O’Donnell.    

A Short History of Fiji (1984) by Deryck Scarr.

GoodReads meta-data is 202 pages, rated 3.60 by 5 litizens.  

Genre: Non-fiction; Species: History.

DNA:  ANU.

Verdict:  Read that.

Tagline: Feudalism remains. 

The archipelago that comprises Fiji is a thousand nautical miles long with two hundred islands, some twenty of which are inhabited with a total population today of just under one million in Melanesia, as distinct from Polynesia (further east) and Micronesia (further north). Within these groups of ‘nesias’ (islands) there are cultural and racial similarities.  Melanesians are more likely to have darker skins.  ‘Poly-nesia’ means a lot of islands, while ‘Micro-nesia’ refers to small islands.  Rather mixed lines of demarcation: pigment, area, and number. (‘Indonesia’ means ‘Indian islands.’) 

These Pacific islanders are reputed to be descendants of daredevils who went rafting from Taiwan millennia ago.   

Prior to the British arrival, Fijians divided into clans or tribes with chiefs and that has remained the primary level of social organisation. These tribes had conflicts among themselves, and occasionally pirated around nearby islands like Tonga, Noumea, Samoa, or Cook, which broadened the gene pool.  Then Europeans arrived to trade first in copra (dried coconut) which releases oil if pressed.  It was a fad as a luxury good in Europe.  

Then came sugar cane to rival the West Indies, where blight threatened supply.  That had two consequences.  First, commercial interest grew, led by the CSR from Sydney, later including investor Frank Packer.  Second, there came in train a demand for much cheap labour in the cane fields.  This latter demand arose at a time of dislocation on the Indian subcontinent, where there was large scale internal migration to escape drought.  

The result was an indentured servitude program recruiting Indians (men and women) to work in Fiji at a pittance (which was far more than they would have had in India).  Estimates suggest as many as 30,000 in short order, and more later.  Subsequently, the Fiji population at times has been about 50:50 between island Fijians and Indians with a smattering of others (Chinese, Kiwi, Māori, Strine, Tongan, Samoan, Brit).  Per Wikipedia today the ratio is closer to 60:40.  

During this colonial period, the British tried to devolve responsibility by negotiating with the Fijian chiefs about land and government.  Hmm, but there were conflicts among the chiefs that hampered that.  The chiefs preferred to deal with the Brits whom they regarded as equals, rather than the Indians whom they regarded as slaves in all but name.  (I am going beyond the author in some of this interpretation.)  

Here is what is interesting.  When the Brits began withdrawing, they wanted to hand over to an elected government. The more recent example of this approach is Hong Kong. The Indians (though there were religious and caste differences among them, these were rinsed out by the Fijian waters) were keen on elections.  Not the Fijians, who insisted that the chiefs nominate each other for seats in government. This mixed arrangement of half elected and half appointed was not going work very well but it lasted.  

The Indians were very well organised (inspired by Gandhi) and got themselves elected with a mandate, whereas the chiefs’ purpose seemed to this cynic to be to hold onto their feudal entitlements.  The differences and tensions between the two communities are deep seated.  

With the proliferation of beet sugar, island cane sugar lost value, and tourism began to develop in the 1970s.  Hence, our trip. We are the number one business for Fiji.  

The author’s circumspection and concentration on description did put me in mind of ANU — privileged and complacent.  It also made me conclude he was keeping the door open for a return visit to Fiji by not calling things as he saw them.  Tricky doing that.

Good Reads meta-data is 512 pages, rated 3.80 by 10 litizens.  

Genre: Biography; Species: Hagiography.

DNA: Strine.

Verdict: Time conquers all, Bob. 

Tagline: A philosopher-king without a throne. 

Bartholomew (Bob) Santamaria (1915-1998) was a major figure in Australian public life for two generations, yet he never held a public office, though many of those who did so looked to him for guidance, including a recent Prime Minister (who liked to pick fights with people who never heard of him, that being so much easier than governing for all the people).  

Much is made of Santamaria’s service in World War II. It is resolved by Santamaria’s own testimony.  Be that as it may, I wondered why there were no archival records that applied to this question of fact.  But on this point, and many others in the book, saying it was so makes it so.  

Santamaria had a weekly column in the Australian newspaper from 1976 and a 7-minute Sunday television program called Point of View sponsored by the National Civic Council which ran from 1963-1991. There are episodes on You Tube. (His column and television comments were in English. I mention this because comparable Catholic television in Quebec of the early 1970s was in Church Latin, if you can believe it.  Believe it, because it is true.)  

Earlier he had founded and run The Catholic Worker to counter the Communist Daily Worker.  In its pages he found a red under many a bed. Soon he was a force in Catholic Action in Australia (see Tom Truman, Catholic Action [1960]), a Catholic soldier marching and marching his whole life, continuing to do so long after that war was over.

His most famous role was in ‘The Split’ that divided the Australian Labor Party and condemned it to the electoral wilderness for a long generation. This is a complicated story but the kernel is the influence of communists in trade unions which in turn influenced the Labor Party. The omens were there for those with eyes to see:  A loud and proud Labor minister in previous governments revelled in the nickname Red Eddie.  A noted Canberra historian of the time was awarded an Order of Lenin. It was a time of mass immigration from both post war Europe and Asia, and many, like Santamaria, supposed communist sympathisers and infiltrators were among them. Then came the Petrov Affair to confirm the menace.  

Unlike many rabid anti-Communists of the 1950s, Santamaria was calm, measured, insightful, and stuck to facts most of the time. That gave him creditability beyond the hard core. The result was the Democratic Labor Party which supported the Liberal Party by siphoning votes from the Labor Party. See, I said, complicated.  (For those that don’t know it, The Liberal Party has never been liberal.) In all these ways and means he had more influence than most knights of Rome.  

He continued to fight this fight long after it was lost and that combined with his adherence to a medieval version of Catholicism meant that the march of time left him behind by the 1960s. One can only speculate on his reaction to the Beatles tour of Australia, including Melbourne, in 1964 (because it is not mentioned in this text), but it’s fun to do so. Labor Party leaders began to use his intransigence to illustrate the dead hand of the past. Dogmatic as he was, he maintained good personal relations with many whom he opposed in the Labor Party. There was never then nor now any reason to doubt his sincerity, unlike the many opportunists who rode the anti-communism bus to fame and fortune.

His final rearguard battles were against snail’s-pace changes in the Catholic Church itself, especially regarding contraception.  He was, as the saying goes, more Catholic than the Pope. He also wanted to turn the clock back on professional sports, homosexuality, the ABC, and much else, stopping the march of time around 1936. 

I said ‘hagiography’ above but it is true that Henderson notes Santamaria’s blind spots, inconsistencies, ego, and the like, but still the tone is reverential. Henderson is less sparing with rival acolytes like Robert Mann, and that was very enjoyable. 

The book offers a wealth of detail, names, dates, meetings, reports, speeches, piled into a ziggurat, but the altitude yields no insight, and after my reading I did not feel I knew Santamaria any better than when I started. The man himself is obscured, not revealed, by the blizzard of details that comprise the book. 

What I can say is that Santamaria was parochial Melbourne through and through, with little reference to the wider world beyond the Yarra River. He seldom traveled and when he did, well, he went to teach not to learn; to give his wisdom not receive any; and to tell not to see or listen.  

Nor is there any evidence in these pages that he mixed with the racial, cultural, social, generational, aspirational, diversity that Melbourne was becoming in the 1960s and after. His reaction to the Labor election in 1972 was fatalistic.  How could people be so wrong?  Back to bully pulpit he went with renewed energy.  

Upon reflection, the details are so many that it almost seems the author himself is trying himself to find the man in the jigsaw puzzle pieces of the information he has amassed.  By the way this is Henderson’s second book on Santamaria.  

Questions remain for me.  Why did he (and his parents) prefer ‘Bob’ to ‘Bart’?  Was he tempted by the priesthood because that was certainly his calling?  Henderson touches on these points, but that is all it is, a touch: Enough to underline the question not enough to shed light.

*** 

By the way, I borrowed an electronic copy from the library and read it on the Kindle as a PDF.    

Good Reads meta-data is 380 pages, rated 4.16 by 6029 cinematizens.  

Genre: SciFi; Species: Hard.  

DNA: NASA.

Verdict: SETI, indeed. 

Tagline:  Less can be more.  

Dr Bored missed a place among the astronauts and now monitors satellite data from distant and demoted Pluto, when….   Something happens that makes no sense. The titular object appears and does not behave according to the laws of physics legislated by the Solar System.  Are the Plutocrats up to something? Someone is going to have pull it over and give it a traffic citation.  Who better than the first to see it.  

That narrative is interrupted, deflected, and slowed by backstories, sidestories, understories, and overstories, which all too often crowd out the front story.  On the plus side, there are no cardboard villains gumming up the works as plot devices.  Those who are unenthusiastic about Dr Bored’s mission have reasons which are fully explored. 

There is a lot of trip and then the Arrival. Remember Encounter at Farpoint? 

P.S. ‘Hard’ means lots of STEM-speak. Lots.  None of it contributes to plot or character and all of it was lost on me.  One has been warned.