Lee Siegel reviewing Peter Gay’s Modernism — The Lure of Heresy From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond.

if the French provided the most extreme assaults on Western rationality — Rimbaud’s “disorientation of the senses,” André Breton’s celebration of primal instincts stored in the unconscious, André Gide’s enthusiasm for the “motiveless” crime, Antonin Artaud’s “Theater of Cruelty,” Maurice Blanchot’s declaration of the death of the author — the reason was simple. … In France, civilization is invincible and eternal. Its immutable stability makes opposition to it all the more cheerfully ferocious. You can hurl the most incredible rhetorical and intellectual violence against French custom and convention and still have time for some conversation in the cafe, un peu de vin, a delicious dinner and, of course, l’amour. And in the morning, you extricate yourself from such sophisticated coddling — the result of centuries of art and artifice — and rush back to the theoretical barricades.

The Telegraph reports this interesting development.

Outlawed by Stalin in 1929, P G Wodehouse – or Pyelem G Vudhaus as he is known – has undergone a remarkable revival since the ban on his books was lifted in 1990.

There can be few fans as dedicated, however, as Mr Kuzmenko.

As president and founder of the Russian Wodehouse Society he has attracted over 3,000 members, some from as far away as Cheliabinsk and Omsk, thousands of miles to the east. His monthly Wodehouse dinners at the Cleopatra and elsewhere are always sold out.

The actors Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie have played their part. Ever since their acclaimed television portrayal of Jeeves and Wooster was dubbed into Russian, young fans have started flocking to the club.

Wodehouse translations have mushroomed and even a souring of Anglo-Russian relations has done little to dim the enthusiasm for this quintessentially English author.

“If you look around on the metro you can see lots of people reading Wodehouse,” said Tatyana Komoryeva, a 25-year-old accountant. “All the bookshops, even the small ones, are guaranteed to sell at least some of his books.”

That there is a Wodehouse fellowship at all, though, is largely thanks to Natalya Trauberg. A self-taught English speaker, the 79-year-old former dissident risked transportation to the gulags under Stalin for translating the theological works of C S Lewis and G K Chesterton in samizdat.

Although she came across an English copy of Damsel in Distress in 1946 (only Russian translations were banned), Mrs Trauberg was too frightened to attempt a translation until 1989. Her first attempt, the Blandings short story Birth of a Salesman, was also produced in samizdat – not for political reasons but because publishers doubted that there would be any public interest.

“From 1929 to 1990 very few, if any, Russians knew anything of Wodehouse,” she said. “It was a big gamble.” As the popularity of the books spread and the publishers changed their mind, a forerunner of the Russian Wodehouse Society was formed, with each member taking their name from a Wodehouse character.

Mrs Trauberg became the Princess of Matchingham, the scheming Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe’s pig.

It might seem odd that Russians find such an affinity with tales of young upper-class twits stealing policemen’s helmets and elderly upper-class twits stealing each other’s pigs. After all, Wodehouse – who died in 1975 – only really touches on matters Russian in The Clicking of Cuthbert when a Soviet author recounts how an assassination attempt caused Lenin to miss a two-inch putt whilst playing golf with Trotsky.

For Mrs Trauberg, however, Russia’s love affair with the author is far from surprising. As decades of repression has given way to a new era of cut-throat commercialism, Wodehouse represents a madcap innocence that many Russians yearn to emulate.

“Russians need freedom and laughter very much,” she said. “They had none for so long. Wodehouse encapsulates this spirit of freedom.

“He also saves souls. His books are all about innocence and joy and purity.

“The reader is lifted into an English paradise, which many Russians believe is the best paradise of all.”

Wilkinson’s Auctioneers in Doncaster will be selling in tomorrow’s auction a book believed to be bound in the skin of FatherHenry Garnet, a Jesuit priest convicted of high treason in connection with his knowledge of Guy Fawkes’ conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate King James I. Garnet was executed by hanging May 3, 1606.

Blood-stained straw from Garnet’s execution came into the hands of Catholic sympathisers who reported that it had congealed into a portrait of the deceased Jesuit. This relic was preserved by the Jesuit Order at Liège until the time of the French Revolution. The story of the image of Garnet’s face in blood-stained straw was, at some point, also associated with this volume allegedly bound in his skin.

BBC news.

Lot 181 A Rare & Macabre Early 17th Century Anthropodermic Bound Book in carrying box. The book entitiled; ‘A True and Perfect Relation of The Whole Proceedings against the Late most barbarous Traitors, Garnet a Jesuit and his Confederats’; Printed London 1606 by Robert Barker, printer to the King and believed to be bound in human skin, possibly that of the aforementioned Jesuit Priest; Father Henry Garnet. The box having a rectangular handle to the centre with the corners having clusters of brass stud flowers, and the front having an iron clasp and lockplate, 11 ins x 7½ ins x 5 ins (28 cms x 19 cms x 13 cms).

Another Anthropodermic binding, posted 07 Jan 06.

Tom Maguire, the Blogosphere’s specialist in Plamegame coverage, already has his copy of Valerie Plame Wilson’s book, and is commenting on his first pass through the pages.

Earlier posting.

Get out your handkerchiefs. Valerie Plame Wilson’s book, telling how her villainous elected opponents tried hijacking control of the US foreign policy from her friends in the State Department and the CIA, and had the effrontery to question the bona fides of her husband’s testimony on Iraqi uranium deals with Niger, appears today.

Mrs. Wilson herself will be promoting sales by blogging on the Huntington Post, sharing Oprahesque accounts of her adventures at the Agency, her courage in facing post-partum depression, and her struggles with the anxieties produced by the sudden arrival of celebrity and book-contract-induced wealth.

The aptly-named leftwing Crooks-and-Liars blog has a couple of video excerpts (here) from Mrs. Wilson’s 60 minutes interview with Katie Couric, which are worth watching. Couric simply accepts Valerie Wilson’s assertion of her alleged covertness, but during the second excerpt she actually asks a few questions featuring a modicum of skepticism. C&L’s Logan Murphy is moved to indignation by Couric’s failure to deliver a 100% loyal interview.

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Also Valerie Plame’s buddy, Intel Community leftist Larry Johnson, offers a hair-raising (and characteristically foul-mouthed) story of poor Valerie, a mother with two pre-school children, abandoned to the mercies of Al-Qaeda by the Bush Administration and the CIA.

What am I talking about? In 2004 the FBI received intelligence that Al Qaeda hit teams were enroute to the United States to kill Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Valerie Plame. The FBI informed Valerie of this threat. This was just more “good” news piled on the fact that her intelligence career was in shambles, that intelligence assets she had recruited/managed were destroyed, and that she was unable to rebut publicly false and malicious smears of her character and reputation by a bunch of partisan Republican hacks. As the mother of two pre-school children, her first thoughts were about protecting her kids. She took the threat seriously and asked for help.

When the White House learned of these threats they sprung into action. They beefed up Secret Service protection for Vice President Cheney and provided security protection to Karl Rove. But they declined to do anything for Valerie. That was a CIA problem.

Valerie contacted the office of Security at CIA and requested assistance. They told her too fucking bad and to go pound sand. They did not use those exact words, but they told her she was on her own. …

So if you have wondered why Joe and Val are a little pissed off, this might help shed some additional light on the matter. Not only did the Bush Administration out a covert intelligence officer working on the most sensitive national security issues in a time of war, but when that officer faced a direct threat to her life and her family’s safety because of that public exposure, they did not do a goddamn thing to help. I don’t know about you, but that fries my ass.

Since Mrs. Wilson appeared on 60 minutes very recently, demonstrably she was not, in fact, assassinated by Al Qaeda. The absence of reports of any attack suggests that Al Qaeda never actually tried. And, why should they? Mr. & Mrs. Wilson have been of great service to them, and have done great harm to the US cause. I would expect Al Qaeda to want to give both of them a medal, not to desire to harm them.

When Paramount Pictures needed books for Professor Indiana Jones’s library, they went to the last survivor of New York City’s old book row: the legendary Strand Bookstore. As Austin Kelley reports in the New Yorker, the Strand is quite accustomed to such requests, and in fact has been offering “books-by-the-foot” (.3048 meters) decorating services since since 1986.

Customers can choose from eighteen basic library styles, for purchase or rental. “Bargain books,” a random selection of hardbacks, is the cheapest, at ten dollars per foot of shelf space. For thirty dollars, clients can customize the color. For seventy-five, they can get a “leather-looking” library, which, as the Strand’s Web site puts it, “is often mistaken for leather.”

For Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), the Strand carefully selected books on appropriate subjects, including paleontology, marine biology, and pre-Columbian society, all in editions published prior to 1957.

Read the whole thing.

James Oliver Rigney, Jr. was born in Charleston, South Carolina.

He served two tours in Vietnam 1968-1970, receiving multiple awards of both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Bronze Star. After serving in the US Army, he attended the Military College of South Carolina (The Citadel) earning a degree in Physics.

Under the pen name Robert Jordan, he wrote an eleven volume fantasy series, incorporating a host of memorable characters, titled The Wheel of Time.

In this reader’s opinion, Robert Jordan was the most interesting and successful entrant into the genre of the numerous authors inspired by the works of J.R.R. Tolkein.

Even today as we approach the 50th anniversary of the publication of Atlas Shrugged on October 12, 1957, the New York Times acknowledges, Ayn Rand’s libertarian masterpiece is selling strongly.

Reviewing Jon Keller’s The Bluest State in the Wall Street Journal, Guy Darst shares some amusing quotations on the endemic political pathologies of the Bay State.

Massachusetts does not suffer alone from its notorious affection for liberalism, it is the incubator for “Massachusetts viruses” that infect the national Democratic Party. The viruses come in many forms: “addiction to tax revenues and a raging edifice complex couched in disrespect to wage earners; phony identity politics without real results for women and minorities; reflexive anti-Americanism in foreign affairs; vain indulgence in obnoxious political correctness; self-serving featherbedding; NIMBYism; authoritarian distortion of the balance of governmental power, all simmered in a broth of hypocritical paternalism.” …

Edifice complex? The state spent almost $15 billion building a highway tunnel under the city of Boston only to discover hundreds of leaks. The genius “Big Dig” builders used what might as well have been library paste to anchor the ceiling of an approach tunnel; four concrete panels weighing three tons each fell last summer, killing a female motorist.

Featherbedding? Back when the tunnel project was expected to cost half as much, a third of the costs were earmarked for “mitigation” endeavors, essentially payoffs intended to pacify unhappy neighborhoods and other malcontents demanding some reward for not opposing the project.

Reflexive anti-Americanism? Last year, FBI agents scrambling to track down what appeared to be a terrorist threat against Brandeis University were denied access to computer terminals at the public library in Newton, a Boston suburb. The librarians demanded to see a warrant; the urgent investigation was delayed for nine hours while one was obtained.

Obnoxious political correctness? The school superintendent in Amherst put the kibosh on “West Side Story” as the annual high-school senior musical after a handful of complaints claiming that the work was racist in its portrayal of Puerto Ricans. (In fact, this modern-day Romeo-and-Juliet story is the most beautiful anti-racism work in American musical theater.) “Political correctness,” writes Mr. Keller, “is the signature cultural statement of the ruling elites, undermining their moral authority and driving a wedge between them and the working class far more effectively than any right-wing demagogue could hope for.”

BBC:

Author Stephen King was mistaken for a vandal when he started signing books during an unannounced visit to a shop in Australia, according to local media.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation said staff at the Alice Springs book store did not initially realise the writer was autographing his own novels.

Bookshop manager Bev Ellis said: “When you see someone writing in one of your books you get a bit toey [nervous].

“We immediately ran to the books and lo and behold, there was the signature.”

Ms Ellis later approached the author at a nearby supermarket and said he was “very nice, charming”.

“Well, if we knew you were coming we would have baked you a cake,” she told the writer.

The prolific author… signed six books including his most recent novel, Lisey’s Story.

Most of the books will be given to local charities, though one was purchased by a customer who was in the store with King.

Ms Ellis added that it was common for authors to visit the shop, check if their books are on the shelves and sign some copies.

“If they’re not on the shelves, they’ll ask about them. It’s embarrassing if we haven’t got their work,” she said.

King’s representative in Australia told the media he was unaware the author was in the country.

The city fathers of Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania would obviously would never have allowed Thomas Jefferson to reside within the jurisdiction of their dismal Anthracite region rust bucket community. Jefferson also owned too many books.

EarthTimes:

A bookstore owner’s obsession with the written word has cost him his Pennsylvania home after local officials deemed his book collection a fire hazard.

Authorities in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., condemned John Puchniak’s apartment this year when a routine inspection raised concern the bookstore owner’s collection of nearly 3,000 texts could cause a fire, The (Wilkes-Barre) Times Leader reported Wednesday.

Puchniak now resides in a local hotel, while attempting to limit the stacks upon stacks of books that decorate his condemned apartment.

But even if he can restore the apartment to acceptable living standards, Puchniak has said he cannot afford to appeal the city to reopen his home.

Attorney Jim Hayward has become a champion for the troubled literary fan, attempting to convince local officials to let the 59-year-old store his growing collection as he sees fit.

Wilkes-Barre Times Leader story.

Brian Doherty, in the LA times, pays tribute on the occasion of Robert A. Heinlein’s upcoming 100th birthday.

The science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein was born in Missouri, and his fiction was mostly set in the future and on distant planets. But there’s no question that Heinlein — born 100 years ago this week — was one of Southern California’s great prophets.

He lived in Los Angeles in the 1930s and ’40s, and first turned to writing because of looming mortgage payments after his failed campaign in 1938 to represent Hollywood in the Assembly. Though he would later become a great inspiration to libertarians, Heinlein was then an active member of novelist Upton Sinclair’s popular quasi-socialist “End Poverty in California” movement.

From the beginning of his career as a writer in 1939 (when he published his first story, “Life-Line,” in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine), Heinlein was one of the field’s masters. Before that, science fiction had been mostly either a heavy-handed and didactic genre or one concerned with unsophisticated fantastic adventure tales. Heinlein added sophistication and realism, creating a future world that seemed everyday and lived-in, not impossibly distant. He treated rockets and space travel as matter-of-fact details of human life — as Heinlein believed they would and must become.

From 1939 until his death in 1988, Heinlein was science fiction’s acknowledged leader, with 33 popular novels, most of them in print decades later
Heinlein’s novels were also powerful precursors of Southern California politics and culture, especially as they unfolded in the change-filled 1960s. …

California, and specifically Southern California, was key to Barry Goldwater’s surprising 1964 GOP nomination victory. Goldwater’s rough-hewn combination of a crusty, antigovernment attitude and extreme bellicosity against communism — which he saw as an unacceptable threat to American individualism — resonated deeply in Southern California at the time.

But the Goldwater surge was preceded by a mini-movement Heinlein tried to create in 1958 with the “Patrick Henry League,” dedicated to the notion that the truest expression of U.S. liberty was preparing for a fight to the finish with international communism.

Heinlein laid some of these concepts out in his 1959 “Starship Troopers,” offering up the idea that American liberty and a relentless fight against the Soviets were inextricably linked — a science fiction version of Goldwater’s subsequent message. It presented a world of low taxes and few laws in which only veterans of public service could vote (not only military veterans, contrary to some Heinlein detractors who saw something fascist in the novel) and where brave young men gave the last full measure of devotion to defeat an insectoid alien menace that was a clear metaphor for communism. …

Although science fiction’s visions and handling of character have become more complex and sophisticated in many ways since Heinlein’s day, his wide-ranging speculations about human futures created a still-valuable mix of ideas and entertainment. In his peculiar and unprecedented combination of rocket visions, a tough-minded individualism respectful of the military and iconoclastic free living, Heinlein is truly the bard of Southern California.