The Star Spangled Banner
A Review of The Map that Changed the World
Flags of our Fathers
Book Review of The Fencing Master
War in a Time of Peace: Bush. Clinton and the Generals
In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis
The Marines of Autumn
True History of the Kelly Gang/A Distant Shore
Hooking Up
Hawaii's Early Territorial Days
Theodore Rex
A Savage Beauty, The Life of Edna St.Vincent Millay
The Star Spangled Banner
by Peter Armstrong
Over the past twenty years of my teaching experience, I have noticed that fewer and fewer of today's students know the words to the "Star Spangled Banner." Asking students to learn the national anthem is not an exercise in chauvinism. It's part of our cultural heritage. There's a story behind it. Here it is:
It was the War of 1812. The British had seized Washington, D.C. and burned the White House and almost all of the public buildings; there weren't many of them in those days. Reembarking aboard ship, the Brits decided they would do the same number on Baltimore, so they sailed down the Potomac to its confluence with Chesapeake Bay and then up that bay toward Baltimore.
Totally unrelated to all this, Francis Scott Key had been dispatched on a prisoner exchange mission, to trade some British prisoners we held for American prisoners held by the British. The problem was how and where to find the Brits.
Well, Key thought maybe Baltimore, so he left Washington on horseback. Arriving at Chesapeake Bay he saw a British warship. Renting a rowboat, Key rowed out to the British warship where he was allowed to come aboard and state his mission. When the commander of the ship learned his mission, he was agreeable to the exchange. Since his ship and many other British men o' war were obviously headed to Baltimore, however, the British commander told Key he must stay aboard so that he could not reveal the British intentions. Thus, Key, now a temporary prisoner, headed with the British flotilla for Baltimore.
It was, however, impossible to reach Baltimore unless Fort McHenry, which guarded the passage and which was held by the Americans, could be neutralized. Fort McHenry came into view early one afternoon, and the battle for it began. The battle raged into the evening and then throughout the night.
Key worried that McHenry might not survive the night battle and wrote, in his own hand (see http://www.treefort.org/~rgrogan/web/flag3.htm) the following words. This original version changed some over the years with "clouds of the fight," for example, giving way to "through the perilous fight."
"O, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose bright stars and broad stripes, through the clouds of the fight, O'er the ramparts we watch'd were so gallantly streaming?
Key was saying that McHenry was still held by the Americans at sunset and was hoping that the Americans would prevail because during the night he had observed, "the rocket's red glare, the bomb [sic] bursting in air / Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there."
He remained concerned because there had been a land attack as well as one by sea, and he added the query "O, say does that star spangled banner yet wave / O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"
Everything turned out all right. Fort McHenry held, and people still visit it today. And a larger version of the flag that flew over Fort McHenry is on display at the Smithsonian in a place of honor.
There are four verses to our national anthem. I once knew them all. The poetry is obscure and the ideas sometimes difficult to follow. The poem was written to match the meter of the English drinking song, "To Anacreon in Heaven." It was a popular melody in America during the War of 1812, and several Americans wrote patriotic songs to it. The most famous of these was Francis Scott Key.
The song was first adopted by the army and navy as the national anthem. It was officially recognized as the American National Anthem in 1931 by an act of Congress.
When I was teaching US History, I had it as a requirement that to pass my course students had either to write or sing from memory the first verse. I have never been sorry that I did it.
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A Review of The Map that Changed the World
by Peter Armstrong
The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester. Harper Collins 2001. pp.329.
In the year 1769, James Usher, bishop of Armagh, was well pleased with himself. He had just published his conclusions concerning the moment of the creation. It had happened precisely at 9:00 AM on Friday, October 23, 4004 BC. Usher was gratified that he had convinced his fellow prelates of the veracity of his conclusions.
In that same year, William Smith was born in England. Son of a blacksmith and with nothing more than a grammar school education, he received on-the-job-training and, in the 1780's, became a surveyor. The late eighteenth century was the age of canal building all over the British Isles. Surveyors were needed to plot out the courses for the canals, and Smith was very good at it.
At various sites where he worked he became fascinated by the stratification of the rocks that were exposed by canal construction. He also discovered sea shells and animal fossils embedded in these strata. Many fossils were clearly similar to each other, yet, depending on the level of the strata from which he extracted them, they changed. They were somehow related but also quite different.
The course of Smith's surveying work took him all over the British Isles. As a result of his travels, he was amazed by the fact that he found exactly he same strata at widely different locations. It was then that Smith conceived his great idea. He would personally and quite alone, create a geologic map of the British Isles. The incredible thing about it was that he actually carried this enormous project to its conclusion.
Of course, the church was diametrically opposed to his findings for two principal reasons: first, if Smith was right, the earth was billions of years old, not 6,000. Second, the changing nature of fossils over time seemed to prove that God had not created all creatures at once as the Bible suggests.
The rest of the story is a grim one, but it has a happy ending. Smith was derided as an ignorant, uneducated lout. His map, when completed, was stolen from him. His wife went insane, but he still took care of her at home. He lost all his money and spent time in a debtors' prison. The scientific establishment, the rich dilettantes who controlled the world of geology, blackballed him.
Everyone likes a happy ending, though, and Smith's story ends happily. Since his scientific findings were unassailable, the scientific establishment could not ignore him. Honors were showered upon him, and he received a lifetime pension in recognition of his services.
Simon Winchester, who wrote _The Professor and the Madman_ and _The River at the Center of the World_, as well as twelve other books, is a trained geologist. He is also hostile to the old English class system that made it next to impossible for persons, regardless of their talent, to succeed. This is a common thread that runs throughout several of his books.
THIS BOOK IS IN THE IOLANI LIBRARY.
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Flags of our Fathers
by James Bradley
Bantam 2001. pp.375.
On the sulfurous, Godforsaken island of Iwo Jima, the key terrain feature is Mount Suribachi. It looms ominously above the only feasible landing beach. The Marines landed on that beach at great cost. Until Suribachi could be seized, the Japanese had complete observation of that beach and extracted a great price in blood. Suribachi had to be taken. After three days of fierce fighting, Mount Suribachi was secured and a small American flag was hoisted from its summit so that the entire fleet could see what had been accomplished. The Secretary of the Navy observing this great feat said, "This assures a Marine Corps for the next one thousand years."
There was one problem. The American flag was very small and could be seen at sea only through binoculars. A much larger flag needed to be flown from Suribachi. A group of Marines again ascended the mountain. Without a flag pole, for no trees grew on this island, the Marines found an old cistern pipe and attached the flag to it. Accompanying the Marines was the combat photographer, Joe Rosenthal. It was he who shot the photo of the five Marines and one Navy hospital corpsman struggling to raise Old Glory, a photograph which is arguably the single greatest image taken during World War II. It captures the courage, unity, tenacity of purpose, and dedication that characterized the sacrifices made by all servicemen in World War II, not merely the Marines.
The author, James Bradley, is the son of the last of those flag raisers who died a couple of years ago. He decided to write a book that examined who these six men were. In so doing, Bradley paints a picture of an America that no longer exists. Frank Sousley came from Hilltop, Kentucky and was the quintessential hillbilly - with all their fine qualities as well as their shortcomings; Harlan Block was a cowboy and high school football player from Rio Grande, Texas; Ira Hayes was a Pima Indian from the Gila River Reservation, Arizona, almost monosyllabic but very proud of his native American heritage; Rene Gagnon was a Canadian American from Manchester, New Hampshire; Mike Strunk, from the coal country of Pennsylvania, was the "old man" of the unit at 26; and John Bradley, a Navy hospital corpsman (medic), was from Appleton, Wisconsin.
None of them were distinguished in any way. Together they represented a great cross section of America in the 1940's and that's the most important reason for reading this book.
The ferocity of the battle on Iwo Jima is almost beyond our capacity to imagine. As one measure of its brutality, three of the six flag-raisers never learned of their fame as they were killed in action before Iwo was secured. In the aftermath of the war, two of the three survivors had unhappy future years. Ira Hayes, the Pima Indian, died of alcoholism only a few years after the war, and Rene Gagnon sought to become" rich and famous" but never amounted to much. Only John Bradley had a full career. He returned to Appleton, Wisconsin where he became a respected pharmacist, and never talked about the war. After his death, his son found his Navy Cross, the second highest meda for bravery awarded by the US government. That motivated his son to dedicate himself to the task of researching the lives of these six men. It is a real look into America's past.
As an infantry platoon leader in Korea in 1952, I lived among these men, and they were no different than those described by Bradley save for one important change. I had three blacks. Due to the old stereotypes, the Marines refused to put them into combat units during World War II. Well, Truman changed all that. I was amused to note that the three fell into the same categories as my white troops. One was absolutely fearless; the second was like me, didn't like combat much but did the job; the third stayed in the background doing the minimum. Save for that, there was little difference: some were high school grads, and most were very young. The oldest was a 26 year old coal miner from Pennsylvania who had been draft exempt in WII. He kept saying that life in the Marines was far easier than coal mining. He would, he said, have volunteered in WW II if he had only known! He always brought this up when things were particularly bad, and it gave us a laugh.
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Book Review of The Fencing Master
by Peter Armstrong
If you have not been introduced to the Spanish author Perez-Reverte, you've missed a treat. Author of The Seville Communion, The Flanders Panel, and The Dumas Club, he is a master of sophisticated mystery. His work has been translated into 18 languages.
In this novel, we find ourselves in the heat of a Madrid summer. It is the late 1860's, and we are on the edge of a revolution that will oust Queen Isabella II from the throne of Spain.
We are introduced to Senor Jaime Astarloa, fencing master extraordinaire. He is a man who lives by a code of honor and self-discipline that dying. Almost sixty years old with thick white hair and the slight physique so characteristic of his profession, he ekes out a life of genteel poverty by giving fencing lessons. He is a man of honor who believes that fencing is no mere sport but a supreme art form and a way of life. Fencing is his raison d'etre. He is a man of dignity and total control and is wound as tight as a drum.
Then the unexpected occurs and threatens his entire way of life. There is a knock on his door. He opens it to find Senora Adela Otero, a woman of surpassing beauty who asks him to give her fencing lessons. Such a thing is simply not done in mid-nineteenth century Spain. Fencing is exclusively a man's sport. He refuses, but she persists and intrigues Astarloa by demonstrating both her verbal knowledge of the sport and her prowess with the foil. The fencing master relents, and he is doomed.
What will happen? Will they become lovers? Who is this woman? Where is she from? How could she have such consummate fencing skills? What does she want from Astarloa? How does this all relate to the Madrid on the brink of Civil War?
This is the nature of the mystery that slowly unfolds from the artful pen of Perez-Reverte. To tell you more would spoil the story. He is a great story teller. You feel both the heat of a Madrid summer and the Madfrilenos who lived through it.
Everyone will enjoy it, but all of our Spanish teachers in particular should read it. I bought it in Barnes and Noble in paper for $13. But it's only $10.40 (20% off) if you use it in some way in your classroom.
Peter Armstrong
October 30, 2001
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War in a Time of Peace: Bush. Clinton and the Generals
by David Halberstam
Scribner's 2001. pp. 543
If I were a very busy US History teacher with little time for personal reading and could only read one book this autumn, this would be the one. Halberstam's story is that of a decade long operation of the United States government without a coherent foreign policy.
The story begins in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the apparently successful conclusion of the Gulf War. There was all that talk about "the peace dividend," the money we would have available now the Cold War had ended. Concerning foreign affairs, the prevailing attitude was that we needed no integrated policy. We would simply deal with minor problems on an ad hoc basis.
It was acknowledged at the time that, yes, there was a problem in Yugoslavia, but in the waning days of George Bush senior's presidency there was a pronounced reluctance to do anything about it. This "do nothing" attitude was carried over into the Clinton administration. Halberstam accurately reflects the fact that Clinton was uninterested in foreign affairs and regarded them as a minor annoyance and interference in his total focus upon domestic economic and social affairs. Reflecting this attitude was his appointment of Warren Christopher as his Secretary of State who Halberstam describes as "honorable, decent, intelligent, uncommonly careful and meticulous [but] lacking in originality and beliefs of his own." (168). "For Bush, foreign policy was his raison d'etre. For Clinton, it was an inconvenience." (193).
As we reached mid-1993, however, the problem of Yugoslavia did not go away. In fact it got worse. Clinton was caught in a bind. He personally favored a more aggressive policy, but he was unwilling to pay for it. The Europeans were dragging their feet, and the Pentagon, still caught in the Vietnam syndrome, was unwilling to fight.
Halberstam summed up the problem in this way. "The world might be changing, the emerging crises in foreign lands might be driven more by nationalism, tribalism and the breakdown of an existing order, but no one attempted to adopt a large conceptual view of how to handle these crises. Instead, pragmatic at heart, the Clinton people would handle policy issue by issue, with no guidelines." (241)
Halberstam then chronicles the tragedy in Somalia where we engaged in a feckless enterprise at "nation building" in a war which pitted tribe against tribe and clan against clan; the opera bouffe situation in chaotic Haiti which we entered to no apparent avail; looking the other way in Ruanda as one million or so Tutsis were murdered in a genocidal war in Ruanda. And always we come back to Yugoslavia where it was clear that Milosevic was launching an ethnic war of exterminating non-Serbs.
Halberstam never states that the lack of action on the part of the United States and our European allies was pusillanimous, but his recounting of the story of the years 1993--1999 makes it clear that it was. Only when Milosevic exceeded all boundaries of decency was any action taken. Two heroes emerge from our author's story. The first is Richard Holbrooke who operated first from State and later from the National Security Council. He saw Milosevic for what he was and constantly badgered the Clinton Administration so that they could not pretend to be ignorant of the fact that the only thing Milosevic understood was counter violence. The second of Halberstam's heroes was General Wes Clark who had the "no win" job of Commander-in-Chief of the NATO forces in the Kosovo campaign. A man who wouldn't play the game by the rules, i.e. following the egregiously hesitant policies of his military seniors, Clark organized the Kosovo campaign in the face of immense difficulties. When he finally won and Milosevic was defeated, the Pentagon generals exacted their revenge and replaced him in the very hour of his victory.
Halberstam closes with the transparent last minute efforts by Clinton to bolster his image as a world leader: his twilight trip to Hanoi and his utter failure to bring together Arafat and Barak. Halberstam never launches into diatribes concerning the Clinton years. It's not his style. He allows the story itself to arouse anger in his readers, and he succeeds in this endeavor.
His message is clear. The greatest nation on earth must have a coherent foreign policy. It must not constantly be ruled by its fears. It must have leaders who lead rather than allow events and public opinion polls to drive them. Clinton failed on all these counts.
Those who remember Halberstam's Pulitzer prize-winning account of how we became mired down in Vietnam, The Best and the Brightest, will >note his use of the same technique, vivid and incisive mini-bios of the principal players running from five to 20 pages in length. There they all are: the Secretaries of State, Warren Christopher and Madeline Albright; the Secretaries of Defense, Les Aspin, Bill Perry, and William Cohen; the Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, Powell, Shalikashvili, and Shelton; the vitally important NSC figures, Tony Lake, Richard Holbrooke, and Sandy Berger; and, of course Bush and Clinton.
There is a bit of repetition in Halberstam's style as well as some pretty convoluted sentences. But these flaws are minor in comparison to what the book gives you: a total picture of foreign policy (or its absence) the 1990's. One wishes that the author had addressed the subject of Islamic fundamentalism, but the acts of terror at the time of publication were as yet "events" not "war in a time of peace." Halberstam also has a marvelous sense of humor. My favorite was a quote from Monica Lewinski to her pseudo-friend Linda Tripp in recounting her actions in the Oval Office. "I thonged him." This is what Halbertsam describes as "that wildly seductive moment when the culture of Beverly Hill 90210 met the culture of the good old boy Arkansas politics." (371)
Peter F.C. Armstrong
October 2001
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In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of its Survivors
by Doug Stanton
Henry Holt Co. 333 pp.
In the last week of World War II, tragedy struck the United States Navy. The USS Indianapolis, enroute between the Palau Islands and Leyte Gulf, Philippines, was attacked by a Japanese submarine. The attack occurred at five minutes after midnight. In twelve minutes the heavy cruiser had sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean carrying with it 300 members of its 1,196 member crew.
But that was only the beginning of the tragedy. Due to a series of terrible errors, distress signals sent by the stricken ship were ignored. Instead, the 900 men who survived the torpedoing spent four full days in the ocean, with little more than life jackets. They had no small boats, no, no water. They were drenched in fuel oil, many of them badly burned, subject to the intensity of the tropical sun, and most of them naked.
The ultimate horror was shark attacks. Some 200 of the men were torn apart and eaten by sharks, about 50 each day. When rescue came, and that occurred only by incredible good luck, only 317 of the 900 were still alive. This book is about what it takes to survive under circumstances that no one should be asked to endure.
It was a bitter pill for the Navy to swallow: such a senseless loss of life on the very eve of victory. Someone had to take the fall. The ship's commanding officer, Captain Charles McVey, was singled out for punishment. He was tried by courts-martial, found to have been negligent in his duty, and was disgraced. He committed suicide in 1968.
It has been 56 years since that tragic sinking of the Indianapolis. It now seems clear that McVey was not culpable. Instead, a very strong case can be made that the multiple failures leading to the death of almost 600 survivors left to die in the water rested with numerous naval officers at many levels of command who should have mounted a rescue mission and failed to do so. Recently, the case was reopened, and McVey received a partial exoneration.
But the real story is that of the 600 men in the water and the various ways they coped, or failed to cope with their situation.
THIS BOOK IS IN THE IOLANI LIBRARY.
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The Marines of Autumn
by James Brady
St. Martin's Press 2000. pp.274.
Imagine you are in a war. Imagine that world is one of swirling snow. Imagine that you are perpetually outdoors without shelter, the temperature never rises above ten degrees Fahrenheit and often sinks down to minus 20 degrees. Imagine that you place a can of beans in your armpit for three hours in the hope that it will thaw sufficiently to allow you to eat a third of a can of cold beans before it refreezes. Imagine that your principal source of water is melted snow. Imagine being a member of a force of 20,000 men surrounded by an enemy army of upwards of 200,000 men. Imagine a war in which any wound, and almost all chest and stomach wounds, means you will die.
You don't have to imagine it, because it actually happened to the First Marine Division in Korea during November and December of 1950. This is the story of how those Marines endured an experience of horror and deprivation that no one should be asked to face. In so doing, they established a new definition of what courage and sacrifice mean. The Marines have many moments of which they are justly proud - but none more so than those weeks in what was called "the frozen Chosin."
This is a novel; however, the only fictional people are three Marines who carry the story. All the rest are real people, and I knew most of them. Oliver ("OP") Smith was the Marine commanding general. A quiet, soft-spoken, dignified gentleman, he was also a hard soldier. His three regimental commanders were legendary figures in my time - Homer Litzenberg, Ray Murray, and the most colorful Marine of the 20th Century, Lemuel "Chesty" Puller. I also knew Puller's son who lost both legs, one arm, and the fingers of his other hand in Vietnam and still lived.
The Chinese generals are also accurately portrayed. Chu Teh and Peng Teh Huai were very real. Veterans of the fabled "Long March," they were the CCF's greatest leaders, both later eliminated by Mao.
The book also reveals the disdain with which the Marines viewed Douglas MacArthur. While arguably the greatest military strategic thinker America produced in the twentieth century, he failed the essential litmus test of the Marines: a real care for the men you command. Secondly, he only tolerated "yes men." Charles Willoughby was his chief of intelligence. When it was obvious that the Chinese communists had entered the war on the side of North Korea, MacArthur refused to believe it and Willoughby skewed the intelligence analysis to fit MacArthur's view. Lieutenant General Ned Almond exercised overall command over both army and Marine units around the Chosin Reservoir. Accepting the MacArthur intelligence analysis, he demanded his subordinates race at breakneck speed for the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and China. The army units did as they were commanded, and when the Chinese army entered the war, it destroyed the over-extended American army units. Only individuals escaped.
"OP" Smith did not believe the intelligence assessments. While not refusing to carry out his orders, he carried them out at a very slow pace. Thus, when the Chinese attacked in overwhelming strength, the Marine units were buttoned up and prepared for them. When reporters found that there were eight Chinese divisions between the Marines and their escape route to the sea, "OP" Smith was asked if he was going to retreat. His response was, "Hell, no! We're simply going to attack in a different direction!" And that's exactly what the Marines did. They cut through and destroyed most of those eight divisions in their harrowing march to the sea, carrying all their wounded and almost all of their dead with them.
This novel vividly and accurately tells the story of those days. It's an exciting read. Soon this story will pass out of living memory. All the leaders are dead, and the youngest veteran is 68. You'll notice I always capitalize the word Marine in this book review regardless of Webster's admonitions. That's one of the first things they teach you when you join the Corps. After reading this book you'll know why.
SOON TO BE IN THE IOLANI LIBRARY.
Peter F.C. Armstrong, Nov 7, 2001
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True History of the Kelly Gang
by Peter Carey
Knopf 2000. 352 pp.
A Distant Shore
by Robert Hughes
Knopf 1987. 668 pp.
Peter Carey has just won the Booker Prize, Britain's leading fiction award for his novel, "True History of the Kelly Gang." It is the second time he has won this prestigious award. No one else has won it twice.
The book deals with Irish immigrants in Australia in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and since I knew nothing about that part of the world, I thought I should read Robert Hughes' book first.
The Distant Shore is the history of the penal colonies England established in Australia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The early years of the Industrial Revolution in England exacted a terrible price in human misery. One of its effects was to make petty crimes skyrocket. In a time of draconian punishment, the prisons of England were overflowing. Wooden hulks, no longer seaworthy and anchored on the Thames, were converted into floating jails. When this was still insufficient to resolve the overcrowding problem, the British hit upon the idea of transportation to distant colonies.
Included among those who were transported were very large numbers of Irish. It's important to note that these Irish were not simply transported.
Included among those who were transported were very large numbers of Irish. It's important to note that these Irish were not simply transported. On arrival, they were required to build their own jails and then become their first inmates. The conditions in these prisons are almost beyond description. To say that they were forced to live like animals is an understatement. Animals were not treated as harshly. In sum, Hughes' book is about as depressing an account of man's inhumanity to man as you are likely to read.
Peter Carey's book picks up the post penal generations of Irish who were scratching out a bare existence in eastern Australia. Their condition was hardly better than that of blacks in the first post-Civil War decades in the United States. Both the courts and the police were in the hands of the English, who were intent upon maintaining their mastery over "the lesser races." They insured their iron control by recruiting a cadre of coopted Irish. The latter group, as is so often the case, were even crueler than the British. The result was a continuation of miserable conditions even into the third generation of the Australian Irish.
Peter Carey's story is that of a legendary gang of Irishmen who, despairing of ever being fairly treated in this unjust society, took the law into their own hands. For a short time they acted somewhat like Australian Robin Hoods. Of course, in the end, they are apprehended and executed.
Carey's novel is told in the first person by Ned Kelly. An interesting literary device employed by Carey is the use of an argot which our author suggests to us is the manner of speaking an illiterate Irishman and descendant of the original penal colony would employ.
HUGHES' BOOK IS IN THE IOLANI LIBRARY AND CAREY's SOON WILL BE.
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Hooking Up
by Tom Wolfe
Farrar, Strauss & Giroux 2000.
In paperback - Picador Books 2001. pp. 293.
by Peter Armstrong
As always, Tom Wolfe can only be described as outrageous. Politically incorrect, devastatingly funny, and often mean spirited (you don't want Wolfe on your case), he is our best observer of American society. This book is a series of snapshots of America at the millennium, plus a novella tacked on at the end.
Wolfe is at his best when he is dissecting the manners and mores of what passes as our civilization. In the first chapter he discusses language and sexual mores, indicating how women now routinely use the term "scoring," a term heretofore reserved exclusively for men - as in, "The whole thing was like very sketchy, but I scored that diesel who said he was gonna go home and study for the psych test."
Concerning our obsession with remaining youthful looking, Wolfe tells us, "In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, old people in America had prayed, `Please, God, don't let me look poor.' In the year 2000 they prayed, `Please, God, don't let me look old.' Sexiness was equated with youth and youth ruled."
In his second chapter, he relates the creation of Silicon Valley by two unknowns - Bob Noyce and William Shockley. He keeps you fascinated as he describes how in 1948 scientists with PhD's were making transistors one-at-a-time by hand. No larger than the end of your finger, each one could replace a whole vacuum tube. In 15 years, they would be able to take the equivalent of a vast warehouse of information and place it on a surface no larger than a playing card. This is the mark of Tom Wolfe at his best. He thoroughly researches a subject and then has the genius to make it fascinating to the layman.
Turning to Wolfe's penchant for being politically incorrect, he next takes on the "Information Revolution" and finds it just chuck full to the brimming with vast amounts of unneeded information. In the process, he coins the term "Digibabble" What a great word!
Now that he is warmed up, he enters the world of our latest kick: neuroscience. This is the study of how the brain and the central nervous system function. Unfortunately, the current conclusions of neuroscience are very politically incorrect. They are telling us, and Wolfe seems to agree, that we are genetically hard wired at birth, and there is little or nothing that education and environment can do to change it. In other words, if you're dumb at birth, essentially, that's the way it's going to be. You don't have to have much imagination to figure out how this sort of idea goes over among various depressed elements of our culture who claim that society has placed them in the subordinate role in the America they live in.
How about Ritalin? Wolfe's take: "An entire generation of boys from the best private schools in the Northeast to the worst sludge trap public schools of Los Angeles and San Diego was now strung out on methylpenidate, diligently doled out to them every day by their connection - the school nurse."
How about this for a twist. Wolfe reminds us that historians generally like to call the twentieth century, "America's Century," implying, of course, the dominance of the USA in that century. However, there is a subtle further inference: that the twenty-first century belongs to someone else. China is often mentioned. Wolfe looks at it differently. He calls our new century "The Second American Century." He points out that the United States is overwhelmingly powerful in 2000, more powerful than any other nation or combination of nations in the world. Wolfe asks what facts makes you think it will be otherwise in the coming one hundred years?
In his chapter entitled "The Invisible Artist," he takes after what passes as modern art: the grotesque works you can view at our museum of contemporary art here in Honolulu. Wolfe's target is not the art itself, but the art critics who so dominate this field that they won't even review artists who are so wrong-headed as to persist in creating representational art. He compares the Vietnam Memorial, which in its facelessness, its black marble and half subterranean location is clearly a personal expression of the uselessness of war in general and the Vietnam War in particular, to the figures and the American flag that were added to this monument later over the objections of the original artist.
By this time you are on page 144, and that would be a good time to stop reading this book. Wolfe's ego gets in the way of his next long chapter entitled "The Three Stooges." It seems that Wolfe is not content with the smashing success of his "Man in Full" and the general acclaim with which the book was received. It stuck in Wolfe's craw that Norman Mailer, John Updike and John Irving ("The Three Stooges") panned it. Rather than looking the other way, Wolfe proceeds to strip the hide off of these three critics, and it's not pretty. It would have been better to have it left unsaid, particularly when one recalls the perfectly preposterous ending to "A Man in Full." Having less than enough material for a full book, Wolfe inserts a novella of 75 pages called "Ambush at Fort Bragg." It is the ugly story of how three homophobic, red neck soldiers from the Florida panhandle stationed at Fort Bragg murder a fellow soldier who is a homosexual. But the real story is that of how TV investigative reporters manipulate the three soldiers and the media in making their name in the TV world. It doesn't take much imagination to see that programs such as "60 Minutes" are his targets.
Oddest of all, is another long chapter written by Wolfe 60 years ago. It is a parody in the style of a Time Magazine profile of William Shawn, the once all powerful editor of the New Yorker. As Shawn is long dead, who cares anymore? Perhaps a handfull of decrepit literary figures who haunt the streets of mid-town Manhattan.
In short, Wolfe's book is uneven and probably unnecessary. I'm glad I waited until it came out in paperback. We could have done without it. But it's always fun to watch a great artist craft his sentences, finding the perfect adjectival description. He is the unquestioned reigning champion of "over-the-top" writing. I attach a sample drawn from his comparison of lunchtime among CEO's in New York to their counterparts in Silicon valley.
Peter F.C. Armstrong. November 18,2001
"Tom Wolfe goes after the New York CEO's in this great example of 'over-the-top 'writing. It is even better when you read it aloud." - Peter Armstrong
There were no executive lunches at Intel. Back East, in New York, executives treated lunch as a daily feast of the nobility, a sumptuous celebration of their eminence, in the Lucullan expense-account restaurants of Manhattan. The restaurants in the East and West Fifties of Manhattan were like something out of a dream. They recruited chefs from all over Europe and the Orient. Pasta primavera, saucisson, sorrel mousse, homard cardinal, terrine de legumes Montesquieu, paillard de pigeon, medallions of beef Chinese Gordon, veal Valdostana, Verbena roast turkey with Hayman sweet potatoes flown in from the eastern shore of Virginia, raspberry snuffle, baked Alaska, zabaglione, pear torte, crme brulee - and the wines! and the brandies! and the port! the Sambucca! the cigars! and the decor!-walls with lacquered woodwork and winking mirrors and sconces with l loopbittle pleated peach-colored shades, all of it designed by the very same decorators who walked duchesses to parties for Halston on Eaton Square! - and captains and maitre d's who made a fuss over you in movie French in front of your clients and friends and fellow overlords!-it was Mount Olympus in mid-Manhattan every day from 12:30 to 3 p.m., and you emerged into the pearl-gray light of the city with such ambrosia pumping throur veins that even the clotted streets with the garbagemen backing up their grinder trucks and yelling, "'Mon back, 'mon back, 'mon back, 'mon back," as if talking Urban Chippewa - even this became part of the bliss of one's eminence in the corporate world! There were many chief executive officers who kept their headquarters in New York long after the last rational reason for doing so had vanished . . . because of the ineffable experience of being a CEO and having lunch five days a week in Manhattan! At Intel lunch had a different look to it. You could tell when it was noon at Intel because at noon men in white aprons arrived at the front entrance gasping from the weight of the trays they were carrying. The trays were loaded down with deli sandwiches and waxed cups full of drinks with clear plastic tops, with globules of Sprite or Diet Shasta sliding around the tops on the inside. That was your lunch. You ate some sandwiches made of roast beef or chicken sliced into translucent rec-tangles by a machine in a processing plant and then reassembled on the bread in layers that gave off dank whiffs of hormones and chemicals, and man and you washed it clown with Sprite or Diet Shasta, and you sat amid the particle-board partitions and metal desktops, and you kept your mind on your committee meeting. That was what Noyce did, and that was what everybody else did.
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Hawaii's Early Territorial Days
by Keith Steiner
Volcano Group Partners, 2001.
If you are looking for the perfect Christmas gift for anyone who loves Hawaii whether it be a kamaaina or a malahini, look no further. Keith Steiner has come up with a wonderful evocation of an era that has disappeared. Filled with nostalgia for the bygone days of turn of the century Hawaii, it is clear that Steiner loved the era in particular as well as all things Hawaiian.
This is no dry historical tome. There is not a single page (literally!) that is not filled with full color photos and art work. It tells its story in 142 pages that provide just enough text to tell the story without bogging down the reader in unnecessary detail.
Steiner takes a unique approach in presenting his book. A third generation Hawaiian, his grandfather came to the Islands in the 1880s and opened a curio store. Before the time when tourists arrived in Hawaii armed with personal cameras, everyone purchased postcards as mementos of their visit. A well known philatelist, Steiner has collected a large number of postcards of that era, the vast bulk of them products which his grandfather had produced and sold in his store. Thus, we see the real Hawaii through the record of these postcards.
And there they all are - postcards of hula dancers, lei makers, luaus, taro peddlers, hukilaus, Waikiki Beach (in an era where visitors walked along its shores in three piece suits but never went into the water!), big board surf riders, the Hawaiian hotel with its broad sweeping verandahs, the Pali lookout (when it was all but devoid of trees), pa u riders, the outer islands, and the flora and fauna of Hawaii.
In short, the book is a beauty which will be enjoyed by a wide audience from professional philatelists to anyone who loves Hawaii. No expense was spared in producing this book, yet it is surprisingly inexpensive. Available in all bookstores at about $25.
Peter Armstrong.
[The author has taught at Iolani School for the past 21 years.]
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Theodore Rex
by Edmund Morris
Random House 2001. pp. 555.
Edmund Morris won a Pulitzer prize for his biography of Theodore Roosevelt from birth to assuming the presidency (The Rise of Theodore >Roosevelt). Very likely, he will be in the running for another Pulitzer for this second volume covering TR's presidential years. If he survives long enough, I presume we can expect a third volume covering TR's stormy and essentially tragic post-presidential years.
I believe this biography to be vital for all American History teachers. There is nothing new in this book in the sense that an educator will be surprised by any factual information that is not already covered in a good textbook. But that's not the point. One basic difference between an average and a superior teacher is that the latter knows his subject in depth.
Thus, Morris' new work should be regarded as an enrichment source that will enhance anyone's knowledge of TR's years. I think it should be on every teacher's bookshelf as a reference book. For instance, should you be seeking in-depth information on TR's role in the Panama Canal business, I doubt you will come across a much better account of exactly what happened. Similarly, if you want to know all about the role of TR as a mediator in concluding the Russo-Japanese War, there is a sprightly examination of this phase in his career. Morris is equally good on the Alaska Boundary dispute, the Cuban intervention, the Roosevelt Corollary, Morocco, Kaiser William II and the Tangier Incidents as well as the colorful if not very important "We want Perdicaris alive or Rassuli dead" telegram.
On the domestic side, we learn lots about George Baer and John Mitchell in the Anthracite Coal Strike, his battles with Hill, Morgan and Harriman in his effort to control corporations, the Meat Inspection Act, Teddy and conservation, Teddy and the national parks, and TR and black America - the famous luncheon with Booker T. Washington and his questionable handling of the Brownsville, Texas violence.
I doubt that Morris will be called on the carpet for plagiarism as has happened to Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, because there are almost 100 pages of footnotes at the back of the book.
Our library should order it.
Peter F.C. Armstrong January 2002
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A Savage Beauty, The Life of Edna St.Vincent Millay
by Nancy Mifford
Random House. 2001. pp. 509.
Don't know much about poetry. Know less about Edna St. Vincent Millay. But Margaret asked for Nancy Mitford's new biography about her, so it was under the tree. A month later Margaret had finished It. Regardless of my passive interest in poetry and poets, I gingerly picked It up.
"My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night.
But, oh, my foes, and, oh, my friends,
It gives a lovely light." (1920)
If students know no nothing else about Edna St. Vincent Millay, they are familiar with these famous lines. Well at least I knew that much. I recognized this famous quatrain and so began to turn the pages.
Born in 1892 in the fishing village of Camden, Maine (now a bustling summer resort), Millay grew up in extremely straitened circumstances. Her mother, Cora, divorced her ne'er do well father. He was assigned by the court to pay $5 a week in child support, an order that he almost never obeyed. This forced her mother to become the principal breadwinner, and she was employed as a practical nurse. It often required that she be gone from home for weeks at a time. This left the raising of the three girls to the eldest child - Edna. However, the curious thing about her long absences was the fact that they acted to strengthen not weaken the mother-daughter relation. All the Millay girls knew that Cora would be there if she could - and she wrote voluminous letters to them several times a week. There is a poignant account of the eldest daughter writing to her mother that she must come home as all three girls were "very sick." That was putting it mildly. They all had typhoid fever and almost died. Cora dropped everything and saved their lives. Unquestionably, Cora was the greatest influence upon Millay to the day she died.
Incidentally, Millay was never addressed as Edna by friends or family - It was always "Vincent." The reason why she got this nickname is unknown. As a published poet (in children's magazines), perhaps she believed that there might be prejudice existing against women. She might have signed her name as "E. Vincent Millay" so that editors would have to guess her sex.
The great break through in her life occurred at the Whitehall Inn in Camden. Still there today (I have stayed there), it's the kind of old rambling wooden New England Inn where ladies in the early nineteenth century would spend a month or two in the summer. It happened that a rich New Yorker, Caroline B. Dow, heard her recite her poetry at the Whitehall Inn, at once recognized Vincent's genius, and agreed to foot the bill to send her to Vassar.
Such are the accidents of life. Clearly, Vincent would never have been able to go to college without Mrs. Bowls assistance. Very likely she would have remained In the backwaters of Maine and perhaps become one of those remote rural figures whose poetry would occasionally appear in poet's magazines.
Vincent hit the Vassar campus like a bombshell. Thanks to her benefactor, her poetry had already been published in the most prestigious literary magazines of the day, and both faculty and students knew it. Besides, she was 21 when she entered Vassar, roughly the age of the graduating seniors. Four years had gone by since her high school graduation - years In which there were no options open to her other than living a humdrum life in a Maine village and raising her sisters.
How did things go so badly wrong for her after this promising start? What could possibly have been divined from her past that would lead someone to realize that she was to live an utterly tragic life? Well, I think it all started at Vassar. A nobody from nowhere, her incandescent success with her early poetry made her conclude that she was "special." She could ignore the usual rules constraining the life of a girl in college in 1914. And she did - concluding that the authorities would always grant her special consideration because of her genius.
It turned out that her self-assessment was perfectly correct. Almost expelled immediately before her graduation (1917), Vassar simply could not afford to dismiss a nationally known poet. Of course, Vincent learned all the wrong lessons from this experience.
Her post-Vassar life was one in which she was arguably the greatest American poetess of the first half of the twentieth century and certainly financially the most successful. In her personal life, it was clear that she saw herself as the quintessential liberated woman. There was nothing that a man could do that she couldn't, and she set about to prove it. She had male lovers; she had female lovers; She also married, but it was to be an "open marriage" in which both agree they could seek alternative partners as their emotions dictated - and they did.
During the Roaring Twenties, what was she like? How attractive was she? The descriptions we have of her were that she was petite - perhaps 5'1" and weighing no more than 100 pounds. She had a long neck and orange-red hair. She was no beauty, but everyone agreed that when she looked at you intently and spoke in her deep contralto voice, the affect upon you was devastating - men and women alike. And apparently her sexual appetites were equal to the passion she aroused.
However, once embarked upon a life of wild escapades, it was not enough to have affairs. By the mid- 1930's, it was clear that she was a hopeless alcoholic. By her own records, she and her husband consumed at their home, 29 bottles of gin as well as various other quantities of beer and wine in a 30 day period - and they had no visitors!
Problems of health and pain associated with undiagnosed maladies (either real or psychosomatic) led her down the path of adding morphine, nembutal, and dialautin to her alcoholism. Finally, in 1950, it all came to an end. She fell down a flight of stairs in her own home and died at the age of 58. - a sad and sordid end to such a promising beginning.
Well, what about it? Is Nancy Mitford's book worth reading? The answer is - definitely!. In 1974, Vincent's sister, Norma, turned over to Mitford all the papers of her sister. Mitford has doggedly worked her way through this vast cornucopia of data for more than a quarter of a century. Make no mistake; this is a great biography. Every American Lit teacher should read it. Of particular value to Millay lovers is the way that Mitford weaves Vincent's poetry throughout the narrative. Thus, you become sensitive to the circumstances which brought about her poetry.
Peter F.C. Armstrong Feb. 2002
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