Arundel (1929) by Kenneth Roberts

Book Review

Arundel (1929) 

by Kenneth Roberts

 My partner is from the Boston area, and her mom lives in New Hampshire, so we end up there at least twice a year.   It's not a bad place to be, particularly the coast of Maine during the summer, which combines a lack of people (even during "high" season), excellent sea food and interesting history. It's led me to an interest in the regional literature of the area- and I was delighted to find this Downeast Press reprint of Arundel, the first in a series of historical novels a la Walter Scott that chronicle the revolutionary war activities in Maine from the perspective of a local participant.

  Arundel covers a pre-betrayal Benedict Arnold and his magnificent, doomed effort to lead a militia heavy army through the heart of Maine to attack the French at Quebec city.   The whole encounter will remind any reader of a Werner Herzog film, with the woods of Maine appearing in place of a South American jungle.  Roberts was quite famous in his day- though he forever tarnished his reputation by getting involved in the Nativist movement, where he served as a mouthpiece for vile anti Mexican and Eastern Europe attitudes.  He also got involved in Florida real estate and wrote copy for several investment schemes that were little more than out-and-out fraud.  

  Roberts is more or less out of print and forgotten- I checked out the second book in this four book series and got a repress edition from the 1940's.   In Roberts favor is his depiction of Native Americans in this book- the Natives are largely portrayed in a positive light, and Roberts includes several arguments that were familiar to Native advocates back in the 18th and 19th century.

Hitler: Downfall (2021) by Volker Ullrich

Book Review

Hitler: Downfall (2021)

by Volker Ullrich

  I love a new book about Hitler! Knowing jokes about obsessions with "Hitler Studies" are at least as old as White Noise, the 1985 novel by Don Delillo, where the protagonist is a professor of the subject.  I confess that while I am 100% not a "Civil War, World War II" type of reader of popular history, I 100% am interested in the great totalitarian states of the 20th century:  the Soviet Union, Communist China and the Nazi's.  There is so much to learn about totalitarianism and its intersections with with the other great isms of the 20th century: capitalism, socialism, media culture, economics. 

   And the nature of totalitarianism as a movement is that you get a powerful leader at the top and, you know, the decision making process, and the way that this guy convinces others to do his bidding, even when the bidding is just bat shit crazy insane- there is a lot to learn about human psychology on the road to murdering six millions Jews and ten million Russians.   

  What the reader learns about Adolf Hitler from Downfall is that Hitler was a gambler who liked to "bet big on a single card," a phrase that is repeated so frequently during the forty hours of Audiobook runtime that I will forever associate playing cards with Hitler's battle strategy on the Eastern front.   This strategy worked wonders for Hitler on the way up- a prime example of an individual seizing the moment, again and again, against the grain of "conventional wisdom."

  This run of wins lasted all the way up to his terrible decision to invade the Soviet Union.  What I learned is that because of his run of wins- from his assumption of power through the defeat of France, convinced the German Army Generals- who were at best Nazi's of convenience, at worst openly contemptuous of Hitler's very being- that Hitler might actually be a genius.   

  The reader also learns that Hitler was amazingly consistent about his desire to eliminate European Jewry and his refusal to rationally contemplate something other than total victory.  For Ullrich, the war was essentially lost for Nazi Germany after Operation Barbarossa- the surprise attack against the Soviet Union- stalled outside of Moscow.  Mind you, this took place before Pearl Harbor.  Hitler's years long refusal to contemplate the reality of this situation led to untold suffering on both sides. 

   As the war drew to conclusion, Hitler became increasingly isolated from reality.  In one memorable scene, he spends the day of the Allied invasion of France (D-Day) micromanaging the deportation of half a million Hungarian Jews.   In the end, he became obsessed with a Wagnerian defeat that would also spell the annihilation of the German people.  Fortunately, this was a step too far even for his own followers, who ensured that his orders to raze German industry to the ground in advance of the invading Americans, British and Russians were not followed. 

  At all times, it seems like the premature death of Hitler really would have been one of those great moments upon which history turns.  It is hard to imagine the Nazi's moving forward with the Holocaust in the absence of Hitler's monomaniacally obsession with the subject.  The chapters devoted to the different attempts to rescue the Germans from Hitler are the most moving (only moving?) chapters in the entire book.

The Trees (2021) by Percival Everett

Book Review

The Trees (2021)

by Percival Everett

   The Trees is another 2022 Booker longlist pick written by an American author.  Everett, a Professor of Literature at USC, is a classic author where I am just amazed to be hearing about for the first time after a nomination for a major literary prize.  Dude teaches in Los Angeles, where I live.  He has been publishing novels since 1983.  He is African American, and many of his books contain edgy satirical themes, which are some of my favorite themes in literary fiction.  None of his books are about newly divorced urban intellectual dads or nervous urban intellectual expectant moms.   And yet, literally had never heard of him before he got nominated this year. Shame on me!

   The Trees is an interesting blend of crime fiction, satire and allegory that takes off after the mysterious deaths of two Emmett Till-adjacent rednecks in a small town in Mississippi.   The local sheriff is non-plussed when the state of Mississippi sends up two African-American agents to assist with the investigation into the lost corpse of an African American found with both dead racists.   The plot spins out from there, written from a variety of perspectives but mainly shifting between the two state investigators and the local sheriff.  There is also a female African American FBI agent who joins the fun, an ancient local woman who has compiled files on every lynching in the history of America (including police shootings, which she says, "count as lynchings."

  Everything stays pretty close to the parameters of a work of southern crime fiction written from a contemporary African American perspective until... they don't.  It is, of course, this divergence from traditional genre constraints that elevate The Trees into Booker longlist territory, a la Paul Beatty's 2016 win for The Sellout.  The plot really goes off the rails in the third act and the last fifty pages is bonkers mccrazy stuff.  Readers will have to abandon any expectations formed by the semblance of the beginning of The Trees to a more or less conventional work of crime/supernatural/fiction and adapt to what Everett is really saying but I found The Trees provided an almost visceral satisfaction upon completion.  I don't think it will make the longlist, but I'm glad to have heard about Everett- I will certainly be taking a look at his back list this fall and winter.