Red Famine - Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum - 2017

Red Famine -Stalin’s War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum - 2017

During the Holodimar, or the Great Famine (1932 to 1933) millions of Ukrainians died of starvation (estimates range from as high as 12 million to at least four million) not from crop failure or climate disasters but because of the policies of Joseph Stalin (ruler of Russia from 1927 to 1953).

Several of the most featured writers on my blog left the Ukraine to

find a better life. Among them are Clarice Lispector, Irene Némirovsky, Gregor Von Rezzori and Joseph Roth.  Many Yiddish writers fled the Ukraine, an area of deeply rooted virulent anti-Semetic feelings going back centuries.  Arguments about the Ukraine have been a big factor in American politics.  Of course those speaking know next to nothing about the history of the region.  

Basically starting with Lenin, Soviet leaders felt that they had a choice, save the Revolution in Russia by taking the massive grain production from the Ukraine to feed Russians or letting millions of Russians starve which would turn the Russians against the Bolsheviks.  Lenin made a decision to sacrifice the Ukrainian people to save Communism in Russia. He made no effort to hide this as Applebaum very throughly documents in quotes from his speeches.  Stalin continued this policy to horrible consequences.  Stalin seems to have gone from the pure pragmatic views of Lenin to a personal hatred for everything and everyone Ukrainian.

Prior to the Russian Revolution grain was produced on farms run by their owners,  called “Kulaks”.  The more they produced the more they made.  Stalin saw the Kulaks as the enemy of communism.  He began a process know as collectivism in which many farms were combined  into one unit run by officials, often with no agricultural experience, who were ordered to deliver all their products to other Russian officials (or Stalinist Ukrainians) to be sent to Russia.  The peasants no longer had any incentive to work hard, to produce as much as they could.  Instead they focused on finding a way to feed their families.  Stealing was no longer a vice to them as their land had been stolen.

Applebaum goes into lots of detail on how this was carried about.  Failure to achieve your goals could send an official to a Gulag or even a death sentence.  Quotas were continually raised.  Only a fool would protest.  This resulted in Ukrainian peasants having any food they had, any seed grain, any farm animals confiscated.  Peasant families were often thrown from their houses with nothing but their clothes.  Workers began to leave the farms to try to find work in city factories.  Many simply roamed the highways until the collapsed from starvation.  In the mean time an attack on Ukrainian culture began.  School instruction was to be in Russian only.  Churches were closed.  Intellectuals were arrested on the slightest failure to praise the policies of Stalin. Any sense the Ukraine was an independent entity was wiped out.  

Things got even worse for the Ukrainians when the Nazis attacked.  At first the Ukrainians welcomed the Germans hoping they would make things better.  They of course did not.  Anti-Semitic feelings were widely held by Ukrainians.  Many saw Communism as initiated by Jews and welcomed their slaughter. They may have not understood that the Nazis saw Slavic people as only one step above Jews.  If successful all Ukrainians would have been replaced by Germans.  

After the war, the official Soviet policy was the Great Famine never happened. 

Applebaum details the efforts to keep the true historical facts of the Great Ukrainian Famine from being lost.

I highly recommend Red Famine- Stalin’s War on the Ukraine to all interested in a country far more talked about than understood.

The Politically inclined as well as those interested in 20th century literature, art and Jewish history will savor this book.

From.  https://www.anneapplebaum.com/

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer-prize winning historian. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Agora Institute, where she co-directs Arena, a program on disinformation and 21st century propaganda.

A Washington Post columnist for fifteen years and a former member of the editorial board, she has also worked as the Foreign and Deputy Editor of the Spectator magazine in London, as the Political Editor of the Evening Standard, and as a columnist at Slate as well as the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs. From 1988-1991 she covered the collapse of communism as the Warsaw correspondent of the Economist magazine and the Independent newspaper.. there is more detail on her website. 

I look forward to reading her new book (from her website)

“Twilight of Democracy explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else.

Despotic leaders do not rule alone; they rely on political allies, bureaucrats, and media figures to pave their way and support their rule. The authoritarian and nationalist parties that have arisen within modern democracies offer new paths to wealth or power for their adherents. Applebaum describes many of the new advocates of illiberalism in countries around the world, showing how they use conspiracy theory, political polarization, social media, and even nostalgia to change their societies.”

Mel u

 

The Child Cephalina by Rebbeca Llyod - 2019

Website of Rebecca Lloyd

My Q and A Session with Rebecca Lloyd

The Child Cephalina by Rebecca Lloyd - 2019

The Child Cephalina, a dark work in the Gothic tradition, is set in London, commencing in 1850.  I was mesmerized by this book from the very start.  Rebecca Lloyd has earned a place of honour in the  company of William Hope Hodgson, Angela Carter, W. W. Jacobs,  Algernon Blackwood and my favourite Ireland's Sheridan Le Fanu.

The story is narrated by Robert Groves, a confirmed bachelor.  He lives with his long time housekeeper Tetty and a fourteen year old boy Ebast who helps around the house. Robert is doing research for a book he is writing about children from the poorest parts of London.  Once a week he interviews some of them, trying to discover how they live and survive.  Many live on the very savage streets of impoverished parts of London.  He feeds them so they are willing to talk.  One day a very strange girl, Cephalina, about eight shows up, with a disturbing fey beauty. 

Teddy, a woman from a village straight out of Thomas Hardy, at once sees the girl as a dark creature, a danger to the household.  Robert is fascinated by her but he does not want to upset Tetty, who very much runs the household, so he is cautious.  He does know what can happen to beautiful young girls on the streets of London and he feels protective to her.  He dismisses Tetty's warning as just country superstition. Lloyd paints a marvelous picture of Cephalina.

Getting London street children to open up is not easy for Robert Groves, many of them are petty criminals and they fear being turned into the police. On his first encounter with Cephalina he learns her probably now deceased mother gave her to the Clutcher family. Cephalina refers to them as her "owners".  Robert is afraid she may be sold sexually to the many gentlemen that visit the Carruthers.

Initially the household is struggling financially, Tetty is stressed trying to manage things and often clashes with Robert about money.  Robert earns fees from articles he contributes to magazines and from royalties on books.  He is getting very favourable feed back from his publisher on his latest book, Wretched London, The Story of the City’s Invisible Children and feels optimistic about the future.

The style of the narrative is as if it might be a weekly serial work in Household Words, a journal owned by Charles Dickens.  I want to share a bit of the story so you can have a feel for the wonderful style:

"I paused for a long time before I finally dipped my pen into my inkpot and put the nib to paper. I fancied that in my letter to Mrs Clutcher I should appear to be a sorrowful middle-aged man who was very close to his mother and upon her sudden death was thrown into a troubled and regretful grieving from which he could not fully recover."

I don't want to reveal much of the plot, in the tradition of a serial story, every chapter has a new revelation and left me eager to know more.  We do learn the Clutchers hold séances in which they claim to put people in contact with deceased loved ones.  Robert, accompanied by his friend, goes to a seance. Lloyd's creation of this is just perfect, I felt I was there and I was even a bit scared.

Fifteen years ago my mother passed away, this participated a kind of mental break down in me.  I actually began to ponder ways I might get in contact with her.  When I discussed this with a cousin I am very close to she asked me how I would do this and I know they were worried.  I say this so you can see how I am impacted by the scenes of desperate people seeking contact with the departed while being defrauded by con artists.  I can see myself in 1850 going to a seance. The seance is a gem, perfectly done, very dramatic.

The city of London in 1850 is evoked with cinematic vermisitude. You can smell the filth, struggle to breath in the fog and avoid the horse droppings.  There are several very interesting minor characters and a trip to Tetty's home town.  

The ending is shocking, a perfect close.

The Child Cephalina is tremendous fun, there are a steady stream of revelations and surprises. The characters are very real, 

the relationships are complex and interesting.  I sense a very high intelligence at work.

I cannot imagine anyone not loving this book.

Author supplied data

"For the most part I write short stories, and while many of them were first published in literary journals, in 2014, I had two collections of my stories published at the same time, Mercy with Tartarus Press, which is a beautifully made hardback book, and The View from Endless Street, a paperback published by WiDo.

Some of my stories could be described as psychological horror and others as magic realism, and from time to time I write about ghostly things. What interests me most is the inventive ways we deal with what life throws at us, and the ability many of us have to slip easily between our invented worlds and the shared world, as if travelling back and forth down a long worn path."

Rebecca Lloyd has  experiences that go way beyond the literary.  I strongly suggest all read my Q and A session with her.

Here is a sample

THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT REBECCA LLOYD

1. I love moths, and the English names for them; they are poetic and fascinating – Lover’s Knot, Hart and Dart, the moth Uncertain, Mother Shipton, Cream-spot Tiger.

2. I think I would like to go up in an air balloon, but I’m also nervous of heights, and so now I just watch them floating over my house in the summer and wave up to the little people in the baskets, and imagine they can see me and are waving back.

3. My garden is full of toads, frogs and newts, and every night in summertime I go out with a torch and see how many of each I can spot.

4. I’m very bad at wrapping presents; I always make a real mess of it, and have been advised that I should use tissue paper.

5. I think I should swim more because I do love it, but I never seem to be able to fit it into my day.

6. I don’t know if I was a day-dreaming child or not, but I wish that the idea of day-dreaming was thought about more kindly by adults, because in day-dreaming you are using your imagination, and it is a precious thing.

7. When it isn’t cold or windy, or raining, I love to take my bike out and cycle down leafy lanes and along the side of the river.

8. I love clouds and how you can imagine faces and animals and landscapes in them. I’ve watched clouds since I was little, and think I always will.

9. My favourite food is prawns – I could eat them till the seas run dry.

10. In my best dreams, I am flying, sometimes above fields, sometimes high up by the ceilings in vast rooms.

I look forward to following the career of Rebecca Lloyd for many years.  

Mel u

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - 1818

An Autodidactic Corner required work

• Sense and Sensibility(1811) read
• Pride and Prejudice(1813) read
• Mansfield Park(1814)
• Emma(1815) read
• Northanger Abbey(1818, posthumous)
• Persuasion(1818, posthumous)

(16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817, Hampshire, England)

Long ago I should have read all six of Jane Austen's novels.  I hope to have read them all by year end.  I have recently seen on Netflix the latest versions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.  Like Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility focuses on the marriage propects of young adult daughters.   My wife and I have three unmarried daughters, 21, 23, and 25 and we often talk about our ideas for spouses for them.  In our minds the youngest is to marry the son of the owner of big beach resort (he has a crush on her), our middle daughter has a relationship with a very nice young man we favour, and our oldest daughter is very career minded.  This helps me relate to Austen's novels.

According to English inheritance laws in effect in the first decades of the 19th century, landed estates were required to be passed intact to sons.  In Sense and Sensibility we see how this can have devastating impact on daughters and surviving mothers. The novel centers on the Dashwood family, country gentry.  Mr. Dashwood's has a grown son from his first wife, now deceased.  He has three daughters with his second wife.  Unless he has a son, their estate, their main income, and their mansion (the movie shows them with twenty servants) will go to his son.  As Mr. Dashwood does get deathly sick he induced his son to promise to take care of his half-sisters.  He agrees but once the father passed the son's wife comvinces him it is best for all to give them just a small amount.

The son's wife soon takes over the house and makes it clear she wants the Dashwood family out.  They luckily are offered a smaller house on a relatives estate.  From here the romantic plots begin.

The influence of Austen on literature is huge.  If for no other reason serious literary autodidacts should read her six novels.  I will start Persuasion soon.

The Railway Children by E. (Edith) Nesbit - 1906

Website of Eleanor Fitzsimons - author of The Life and Love of E. Nesbit

Edith Nesbit 

August 15, 1858 Kennington,London, UK

May 4, 1924. New Romney, UK

I first heard of Edith Nesbit (who published as E. Nesbit) in biographies of Nancy Mitford and Rosamond Lehmann, two of my English favourite authors.  Both grew up with very 

fond memories of the writings of Nesbit. In fact their own childhood seems like something Nesbit might have created.  Nesbit was a very prolific writer of what we now call young adult fiction.  I recently acquired in Kindle format a 9435 page "Ultimate Collection of the Work of E. Nesbit" with twenty novels and more than two hundred short stories and poems, for $0.99 (estimated reading time 113 hours and two minutes).  

I love to read literary biographies.  I recently became aware that Eleanor Fitzsimons, author of Wilde's Women, has forthcoming in October this year

The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit.  A quick bit of research told me I wanted to read this book. (Nesbit, along with Beatrix Potter, a biography of which I have posted upon, are considered by many the UK's greatest writers of fiction for 

children and young adults-Never having read anything by Nesbit I checked on Amazon for her highest rated books.  Among them was The Railway Children, available for free as a Kindle.  I finished this book yesterday.  I loved everything about it!  Reading it was a joyous experience.

The central characters are three children, two girls and a boy and their mother.  (My wife and I have three daughters 
so I do like books featuring three children.) The time is maybe 1905, before the fall of the Czar.  The father is off stage for most of the storyline, his absence drives the plot.  Events necessitate the family move from their posh London home, selling much of their furniture, to a country home.  The courageous mother, you will love her, such mothers helped England endure and win two world wars, tells the children they "will be poor for a while".

Their new house is near a Railway.  They are not horribly poor but for the first time the children sense they must watch their money.  They seem to have some income and the mother makes money from publishing in magazines.

The children are fascinated by the train, they personify the locamotive as a red dragon.  They begin to wave at an elderly gentleman who is on the 913 AM train everyday.  Soon he begins to wave back. This relationship turns out to be a wonderful happenstance for the family.  One of the things I liked about this novel was just how fundamentally decent almost everyone the children encounter turn out to be.  Several characters seem gruff at first but soon they show a deep core of decency.  There are numerous cliffhangers (this was first published in serial fashion and I know I would have been an eagerly awaiting new chapters).  I don't want to spoil at all the plot as it is so gripping, such fun.

All of the characters, even the minor ones,  are very real.  The relationships of the children to each other was perfect. We see them develop in response to their situations.  Nesbit subtly depicts class differences in rural England.  The mother is obviously very cultured.  In a marvelous chapter we do meet a famous Russian writer.

I was wondering would today's mchildren still love this story.  Our daughters are now 21, 23, and 25.  Two are avid readers.  I will encourage them to try this novel.  

I will start her The Treasurer Seekers very soon.

Once I have read a few more works by Nesbit, she has a number of short stories featuring cats, I willread Eleanor Fitzsimon's new biography.

You tube has the movie based on the novel. It is quite decent

The Edith Nesbit Society's website had a good brief bio on her 

http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/biography.php

Eleanor Fitzsimons is a researcher, writer, journalist and occasional broadcaster. Her work has been published in a range of newspapers and journals including the Sunday Times, the Guardian and the Irish Times and she is a regular radio and television contributor. She has worked as the sole researcher on several primetime television programmes for the Irish national broadcaster, RTE including an examination of the historic relationship between Britain and Ireland commissioned to coincide with the landmark visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland. She is the author of the highly regarded Wilde's Women..from her publisher.

Mel u

A Tadge to Your Left - A Short Story by Janet H Swinney- 2019

You may read the story here

Janet H Swinney on The Reading Life



Website of Janet H Swinney

“A Tadge to Your Left” is the sixth short story by Janet H Swinney to be featured on The Reading Life.  My posting on so many stories is the result of the high esteem I hold for her work.  Her stories range in setting from Indian to England.  (All of the stories I have featured can be read online, just go to my link above.)

“A Tadge to Your Left” tells two stories, in alternating paragraphs, a very interesting technique.  We first meet Hooter, a man teaching biology in an English High School. Here is our introduction to him:

“He wasn’t an old man, but he wasn’t fanciable either. There wasn’t one of them who would have volunteered to have anything to do with him. Chalky, the Maths teacher, on the other hand, or Blinker who taught music…

he was about thirty or forty. Neat, innocuous, straight up and down. Shit coloured trousers and a snot-green shirt. Spectacles that sat at the top of a long nose that he blew frequently on a khaki handkerchief. A wide, formless mouth with a moist lower lip. Straps of oily, no-colour hair plastered across the top of his head. Sometimes he wore a lab coat that made him look like a storeman in the Co-op. He’d only been there a couple of weeks when he got his nickname – Hooter.”

Our second character is Derek, a factory worker:

“She stirred in her bed. It was only Derek. Home late after a long shift at the Caterpillar factory.”

We learn a lot about their very different sex lives.  

I really do not want to give much detail of the plot involving Hooter.  He is a thoroughly nasty man who preys on his female students.  Once you realize what the title denotes you will feel a mixture of laughter and disgust.  Swinney does a great job presenting him and the atmosphere of the school.

In the thread of narrative on Derek we see a young couple in a financial struggle, wondering if they should have their first baby.

For sure “A tadge to Your Left” was a lot of fun to read.  

Maybe the common thread is both men are frustrated sexually, maybe Derek will remain a wage slave and Hooter wind up in prison.  Their

 lives are dominated by their feelings toward women. I can see a connection to the kind of schooling they probably had.

I look forward to following Janet H Swinney for many years.

About the author

Janet H Swinney was born and grew up in the North East of England, got her political education in Scotland and now lives in London. She also has roots in India, and her experience of life there has influenced her work.

Ten of her stories have appeared in print anthologies. The Map of Bihar was published both in the UK (Earlyworks Press) and in the USA (Hopewell Publications), where it appeared in ‘Best New Writing 2013’ and was nominated for the Eric Hoffer prize for prose. The Work of Lesser-Known Artists was a runner-up in the London Short Story Competition 2014, and appeared in ‘Flamingo Land’ (Flight Press, 2015). The Queen of Campbeltown appeared in ‘The Ball of the Future’ (Earlyworks Press 2016).

Several of her stories have been published by online literary journals, including the Bombay Literary Magazine, Out of Print, Joao Roque and the Indian Review.

Janet has had commendations and listings in the Fish International and Fabula Press Nivalis competitions, among others. A Tadge to Your Left was shortlisted in the Ilkley Literature Festival 2017. She is currently working on a play based on the stories of the Indo-Pakistani author, Saadat Hasan Manto. When she isn’t writing, she teaches yoga.

Mel u

RAGNARÖK The End of the Gods A.S. Byatt - 2011 - 180 pages

Gateway to A S Byatt on The Reading Life

After Completing A. S. Byatt's  The Children's Book, having previously read Possesion and The Biographer, I decided I next wanted to read The Virgin in The Garden.  I checked a few days ago and found a short work of Byatt Ragnarök The End of the Gods marked   down temporarily to $1.20, from $8.95, it looked interesting so I hit purchase now.  

The book is part of the Cannongate Myth Series. The Canongate Myth Series is a series of novellas published by the independent Scottish publisher Canongate Books, in which ancient myths from various cultures are reimagined and rewritten.  Byatt makes us of ancient Norse Myths.  

The story is structured around a lonely isolated very bookish young girl maybe ten, set in England around 1941. Her father is a pilot, stationed in North Africa.  She fears he will never return and that the war will never end.  She discovers among her father's books a work on Norse mythology.  She retreats into this world, very absorbed in the Gods.  She begins to relate them to the Christian stories she has been taught.

Much of this book is about the Myths, explaining them.  I would've enjoyed more of a focus on the girl and her family.

I found this interesting and glad to have added it to my read works by A S Byatt.  I would not endorse the book at full price to those I am not sure would enjoy it.

Mel u

The House of Fear - A Short Story by Leonora Carrington - 1937 - translated from the French by Kathrine Talbot with Marina Warner:

A Lovely Reading of The House of Fear

“When I got home I lit a little fire to prepare my meal. I had a cup of tea, thought about my day and mostly about the horse whom, though I’d only known him a short time, I called my friend. I have few friends and am glad to have a horse for a friend. After the meal I smoked a cigarette and mused on the luxury it would be to go out, instead of talking to myself and boring myself to death with the same endless stories I’m forever telling myself. I am a very boring person, despite my enormous intelligence and distinguished appearance, and nobody knows this better than I. I’ve often told myself that if only I were given the opportunity, I’d perhaps become the centre of intellectual society. But by dint of talking to myself so much, I tend to repeat the same things all the time. But what can you expect? I’m a recluse. It was in the course of these reflections that my friend the horse knocked on my door, with such force that I was afraid the neighbours would complain.” - From “The House of Fear”  who among us has not had such thoughts during breakfast?

Leonora Carrington- Britain's Last Surrealist Tate Shots. A wonderful beautifully done video -  (By the author of The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington, Joanna Moorhead, includes a conversation with  Carrington as well as images of her art)

Leonora Carrington A Surrealist Trip from Lancashire to Mexico. From the BBC

The Reading Life Leonora Carrington Project

I will remember April, 2017 as the month I "discovered" Leonora Carrington.  I know most of us living a reading life have had the experience of being amazed by a new to us writer, someone you had never even heard about before the day you first read their work.  You do a bit of Googling only to learn you are seemingly among the very few who have not long ago read their work.  This is a humbling experience but also one of the great pleasures of the reading life world has to offer.  This is how I feel now about Leonora Carrington.  (Be sure and look at her art work also.)

In observation of the 100th birth anniversary (April 6, 1917) of Leonora Carrington two collections of her short stories and a fascinating sounding biography by Joanna Moorhead, The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington a

were published. Carrington was very closely associated with the Surrealist movement, both personally and artistically.  (In the long ago I visited the Museum of the Museo Nationale de Anthropologia in Mexico City where I must have seen one of her works.  Her art is on display in major museums throughout the world.) 

“The House of Fear” is literary surealism.  Gloria Orenstein in her introduction to the 1975 collection of six of works said:

"Leonora Carrington's express the system of being through occult parables whose true meaning becomes accessible to those initiated into the specific form of symbolism that a work displays. The symbols are emblems derived from a deep knowledge of alchemy, Cabala, Magic, the Tarot, witchcraft and mythology".

I have issues with the notion of short stories having "a true meaning" but this is an illuminating remark.  Long long ago I was quite into the occult, I studied various systems of Magik, Asian texts, gnosticism, symbolism from The Tarot, the teachings of the order of The Golden Dawn, Cabalistic teachings.  I can see, or perhaps project, much of this onto her art work and in her stories.

My main purpose here is to let interested parties know they can listen to this story on YouTube and to keep a record of my reading.  Like lots of her narrators,the central and only human character is an isolated woman with issues, mutual no doubt, with society.  A  horse invites her to a party and she agrees to go.  The party is very strange and seems to pretend danger.

“The House of Fear”  will have you probing your Jungian archetypes.

Orleander Boussweau