The Right (and Wrong) Way to Write a Movie or Book Review

Now, I will freely admit that I am an amateur reviewer. I am not a professional. I am not a highly trained film or book critic with an English degree and extensive schooling in literary criticism. I have some background in it, however, as textual analysis is often an extremely important part of historical and cultural research.

Nevertheless, I write my reviews in order to achieve two things: 1) to keep my mind sharp while I'm in Korea, and 2) to practice and improve my ability to write good reviews. I enjoy reading books, and I also enjoy cinema. I read fiction and watch cinema for the same reasons as I read philosophy, history, and political science books--to keep in practice with textual analysis and criticism, to think (I enjoy thinking), and to learn something.

Now the bulk of the books I've reviewed here I give generally positive reviews. The reason for that is many of the books have been preselected due to their reputations or the reputations of their authors. I could write a number of reviews on books that are not very good, but I honestly don't want to waste my time with dreck. I did enough of that in high school and college.

Anyway, in the past year, I'd come across two amateur internet film reviewers. These reviewers are Confused Matthew (pictured below) and Mr. Plinkett (pictured left) at Red Letter Media. Of the two, Mr. Plinkett is the superior reviewer. He not only analyzes the plot and pacing, but also costume design, set design, cinematography, and overall effectiveness of the film.

Confused Matthew is an extremely flawed, although quite talented, amateur film critic. Matthew's strength is the ability to analyze the plot of a film and zero in on inconsistencies, sloppy scriptwriting, and poor characterization. As an example of some of his better reviews, I'd like to indicate his critique of the Matrix sequels. Matthew is very good at exposing plot holes and characterization inconsistency, as well as pointing out how the Wachowski Bros. clumsily attempted to deepen their story's metaphysical and philosophical meaning by shoehorning Baudrillard into their dialogue and plot points. Matthew is the sort of reviewer who can tell when a character has been handed the idiot ball, or when lazy scriptwriting and poor plotting choices lead to wall bangers. These strengths are also possessed by Plinkett, but Plinkett doesn't demonstrate any of Matthew's flaws.

Confused Matthew's weaknesses all stem from his own subjectivity. As Quantumjoker has indicated, Confused Matthew is an extremely subjective reviewer. Now, all of us are very subjective. It's almost unavoidable. However, Confused Matthew's failing is his inability to approach something he dislikes from a coldly rational standpoint. This has led to his extremely flawed 2001: A Space Odyssey review. As I mentioned before, Chase Melendez responded to Confused Matthew, in my opinion demolishing his entire review. Matthew's rebuttal failed to address Chase's criticisms effectively, and ultimately, Chase's absence from the Internet world has led Matthew to discontinue his self-defense. Chase hasn't been the only person to respond critically to Confused Matthew's inexplicable review--Poparena and Quantumjoker collaborated on a multi-part response as well.

Matthew's bias against 2001: A Space Odyssey effectively invalidated his entire review because anyone who has seen 2001 and watches Matthew's review should see how Matthew effectively turned his brain off during the entire feature. His premise that 2001 fails as a film--indeed, for Matthew, is not a film--because of the absence of narrative is demonstrably false. Indeed, it is self-evident during other reviews of other movies that Matthew simply stopped paying attention to what was happening on the screen and instead focused on his own initial impressions and frustrations. A good example of this is his review of Spirited Away--there are parts where a viewer who watches Matthew's review, then views the film, can demonstrate scene-by-scene how Matthew is simply wrong in his assessment.

Personal biases are capable of being overcome if one chooses to do so. A great example of that is a friend of mine who viewed Darren Aronofsky's art film, π. This friend said that he despised the film. When asked why, he said that it was the grinding pacing and the overall bleakness of the experience that generated a visceral, negative reaction. He did not say that this was a flaw, however. He stated that this aspect of the film was actually an integral part of it. The film was incredibly effective at what it was designed to do. The film was not a failure for him. He was capable of moving beyond his own biases and appreciate the movie.

Another good example may be my own reactions to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. When I read this book at 15 or 16, I despised every moment of it. I thought Holden Caulfield was an indescribable moron, irrational to an extreme, and thoroughly reprehensible a character. I believed the book failed as a novel because Holden Caulfield, for me, failed as a character. When I was 26 and reread the novel, my opinion of Holden hadn't changed. I still disliked the book. However, being older, wiser, more well-read, and more experienced, I was able to understand what Salinger was trying to accomplish through Holden. That understanding completely altered my assessment of the book's merits. My own personal opinion is that I still dislike the book, mostly for Holden's character. However, my assessment is that the book is an extremely deep meditation on the loss of innocence and teenage anxieties. Holden isn't a character, he's a stand-in for all pre-teens his age, and his actions aren't meant to reflect the actual actions of a boy so much as express the paradoxes and contradictions warring within the pubescent psyche of a male youth. The book is actually extremely worthwhile and is an important piece of American literature, and though I don't really enjoy it, I cannot recommend anyone not read it.

Confused Matthew is an extremely smart and astute guy--he is capable of giving his opinions on films and backing them up. However, what he does not understand is that the role of a critic is not to simply give your opinions. Your role is to assess the merits and flaws of a film or novel as objectively as possible. In order to do that, you are obligated by intellectual honesty to divorce yourself from your own opinion as much as you can. In that regard, I'd like to hold Confused Matthew up as an example of how not to write a review.

But how can one divorce oneself from one's own opinion? Well, it's really impossible to do so totally, but it is possible to mitigate one's emotional response. There's no accounting for taste, and that includes your own. So the critic has to develop a rubric or a set of guidelines that they follow in order to limit the intrusion of his/her personal taste regarding the subject of his/her criticism.

For these guidelines, I turn to the advice of novelist and renowned literary critic John Updike.

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give enough direct quotation — at least one extended passage — of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy précis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's œuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in any ideological battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never... try to put the author "in his place," making of him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys of reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

--"Remembering Updike," The New Yorker Online

Let's tackle each of these points in turn, shall we?

Rule #1 is perhaps the most important rule we should remember (hence its prime position). Do not criticize the film or novel for failing to do what it wasn't attempting to do in the first place. Only critique whether it succeeds at doing something the director/scriptwriter/author intended, or if it fails. If it fails, provide an explanation as to how and why, and provide suggestions on how it could have been successfully attempted.

Rules #2 and #3 are somewhat connected. Quoting (or playing segments, if your subject is a film) is incredibly important, especially when you are trying to illustrate your point. It can provide direct evidence for your criticism or your praise. It also helps you hone your criticisms--you are providing both your audience and yourself with something tangible that can help to focus and clarify your analysis.

Rule #4 is difficult to achieve, especially when you must give concrete reasons why a film or novel fails or succeeds. This is up to the individual critic's taste, and both Plinkett and Confused Matthew essentially unravel large swathes of the narratives they analyze, often out of necessity. Fortunately for them, these are often films that have already been watched and therefore, aimed at audiences for whom the plot won't be spoiled.

Rule #5 is, like Rule #1, something Confused Matthew needs to consider very closely. Matthew's review of 2001 leaves him open to attack (an opening Chase justifiably exploited) when he compared it to Jurassic Park as an example of a film that was successful. Both films were attempting to achieve radically different goals--indeed, Jurassic Park's goal is nowhere near as deep or complex as 2001's, and the former far more simplistically didactic than the latter, which is more open-ended and compelling.

But the most important part of Rule #5 for Confused Matthew is perhaps this little line:
"Sure [the failure]'s his and not yours?"

In the case of 2001, I believe the failure is not of the film, but of the critic.

Finally, the fuzzy, vaguer Rule #6, firmly states that the critic should not review a piece that he/she is predisposed to dislike. This single comment completely and utterly invalidates a great many amateur film reviewers online.

Updike's advice is the key to writing a good review, and it is advice that I struggle to follow in every book or film review that I write. I believe that more reviewers should take John Updike's advice--it will improve your ability to really, truly perform critical analysis on a text such as film or fiction.

I'd also like to say that, though I believe Confused Matthew is a flawed film reviewer, that doesn't make him bad or stupid. Indeed, I think he's actually one of the better amateur film critics out there, and especially enjoy his reviews of the Matrix sequels and The Lion King. I believe, however, that he has no desire to improve as a reviewer, and that his internet celebrity status has, perhaps, had an unfortunate impact on the tenor of his reviews lately.

Book Review -- THE BIG NOWHERE by James Ellroy

James Ellroy, the self-proclaimed "Demon Dog of Crime Fiction," is the culmination of everything that began with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, writers whom he read heavily in his youth, accompanied by drug and alcohol abuse. The darkness of his own life experiences would come to be channeled into his fiction, producing works that are the ultimate realization and perfection of the hardboiled noir genre.

The Big Nowhere is no exception, and perhaps my favorite book by Ellroy that I've yet read (and, ironically, the only book in his LA Quartet that hasn't been made into a film). Sandwiched between The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential, The Big Nowhere plumbs the darkest depths of the human soul and dredges up the blackest ichor that we spend immense amounts of energy trying to ignore or escape. It is a dark, pessimistic tragedy, and yet simultaneously a triumph for the hardboiled noir genre as a whole. The book is a wrecking ball written in a terse, staccato, laconic style, laced with jive-talk and bebop rhythms.

This is one of the books that forever changed me. The list of books is pretty short: Dune, The Lord of the Rings, Blood Meridian, and Fight Club are pretty much at the top. James Ellroy's The Big Nowhere is among them as a book that has had a tremendous impact upon me.

This is the tale of three very different cops that are drawn together for a grand jury investigation into communist influence on labor union strikes in Los Angeles of 1950. Mal Considine is an up-and-coming DA's Bureau detective with a very dubious act of "heroism" on his war record, and a resentful Czech wife and her son as spoils taken from Germany. Danny Upshaw is a homicide detective with the LA County Sheriff's Department, arch-rivals of LAPD, who is on the trail of a twisted killer. Turner "Buzz" Meeks is an Okie ex-cop, moonlighting as an enforcer and occasional pimp for Howard Hughes that is drawn into the grand jury investigations through his connections to Mickey Cohen, local mobster kingpin.

Ellroy rushes in where Hammett and Chandler feared to tread. Drugs, prostitution, corruption, racism, and homosexuality are openly and brutally exposed. Ellroy is not afraid to illustrate the darkest pits of mid-century Los Angeles. As with most of his novels, the city of LA is, itself, a character, and not a very nice one, either. The city that is the 1950s embodiment of the American dream is little more than a thin veneer of fantasy over a seething pit of vice and iniquity. Ellroy is a brilliant talent at crafting real, believable characters, and is a genius at creating tragic heroes out of noir protagonists.

To truly understand Ellroy's writing, one must understand the conventions of the hardboiled noir genre. The noir protagonist is a sort of antihero. He is often a world-weary individual, disillusioned and cynical. He sees the world as corrupt, a place where no good deed goes unpunished and lives to get his kicks. At heart he may be a sentimental romantic deep at heart, but he keeps it hidden and repressed, because whenever he allows himself to be vulnerable and truly care about someone, it always backfires. He lives by a code of honor that is his own, and strictly defines himself according to it. In a world of predators, prey, and scavengers, the hardboiled hero struggles to be his own man and not to fall into any of those categories. Typically, a noir hero will come up against some sort of challenge to his code, and will either compromise it and fail, or he will succeed and triumph, only to find the reward to be not worth the cost and the victory Pyrrhic at best, empty and meaningless more often than not.

Considine, Upshaw, and Meeks don't perfectly fit the archetypal noir hero, but that is because Ellroy creates unique and multidimensional characters. They're not a riff off of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, or J.J. Giddes. They're each deeply driven by believable motives, possess compelling personalities and worldviews.

Considine is haunted by his cowardly slaying of a Nazi officer--an action he took in order to avenge his Czech girlfriend's tarnished honor. The victory became hollow when, after years of marriage, she began to resent her life in America and yearned for the Czechoslovakia of her youth, before the occupation. Her son, who had suffered horrific sexual abuse during the occupation, associates the Czech language with his traumatic experiences--something his mother disregards in her desire to de-Americanize her son and make him into a good Czech boy. Considine, sees the grand jury investigation as a way to propel himself to the highest pinnacle of DA Bureau brass and make an inviolable name for himself in order to secure custody of his adopted son in the divorce proceedings.

Upshaw is far more complex and troubled. He is a young crusader cop that is tormented by his latent homosexuality and plagued by his own revulsion of female sexuality. Throughout most of the novel, he keeps it deeply buried and subdued, denying it to himself. However, the clues are there--with every stomach churn he feels when a woman winks at him, or his fascination with certain young men's appearances. A brutal murder with homosexual underpinnings begins to absorb Upshaw, who has been obsessed with the darkness in the human soul since he witnessed the barbaric slaying of a young woman as a youth. This obsession seems to be a sublimation of his own sexuality. However, the trail of this killer, who stalks and murders homosexuals, begins to drag his own buried demons out of his subconscious and into the light.

Meeks is the most straightforward character in the book--but that does not mean that he is shallow or two-dimensional. Meeks doesn't have any deep dilemmas or skeletons in his closet. At heart, he is a gambler, and the thrill of risk gets him into trouble. Knowing full-well the stupidity of his actions, he falls in love with Mickey Cohen's squeeze, and plays a huge gamble to keep his association with her secret.

These three seemingly unrelated characters are pulled together by the labyrinthine nature of LA intrigue. Ellroy writes like a spider, weaving a silk web of murder, politics, conspiracy, and betrayal. The heroes' flaws prove their undoing, but not in very predictable manners, and only the most tarnished of the characters really manages to make it through (although his ultimate fate is not revealed in this volume, but in the prologue of the next--LA Confidential). Their flaws, however, make them so real, it is difficult not to like the characters. Indeed, despite past rivalries and bad blood, they find it difficult not to like one another, resulting in a friendship between the three that, unfortunately, gets them all into more trouble.

Most compelling, however, is Lieutenant Dudley Smith.

Mal shook the man's hand, recognizing his name, his style, his often imitated tenor brogue. Lieutenant Dudley Smith, LAPD Homicide. Tall, beefside broad and red-faced; Dublin-born, LA raised, Jesuit college trained. Priority case hatchet man for every LA chief of police dating back to Strongarm Dick Steckel. Killed seven men in the line of duty, wore custom-made club-figured ties: 7's, handcuff ratchets and LAPD shields stitched in concentric circles. Rumored to carry an Army .45 loaded with garlic-coated dumdums and a spring-loaded toad-stabber.

An astute reader who has seen LA Confidental or read Clandestine will recognize Dudley Smith. Of all Ellroy's characters, he is the most persistent--and perhaps the most evil and villainous. Dudley is a master-manipulator, kingmaker and breaker, vindictive to the extreme, with a small cadre of loyal underlings and enough bureau clout to make or break any man's career. The man is far, far more than he appears, and if I was a bit more of a literary romantic I'd suggest that the character was actually the Devil himself. Smith is generally soft-spoken and not given to great displays of emotion, but just as still waters run deep, Smith's appearance as a mid-level policeman is remarkably deceptive--Smith is perhaps one of the most powerful men in the entire city. He resurfaces in many of Ellroy's books, and indeed is often somehow or some way at the root of many of the mysteries and intrigues that take place. Dudley Smith is almost always the ultimate victor--true to hardboiled noir form, the smart, subtle, and remorselessly ruthless are the ones who win.

The style of prose is terse, direct, and laden with vernacular, giving a lot of spice to the tale. Ellroy writes how his characters think and unabashedly drops racist epithets and slang that were commonplace in the mid-twentieth century American parlance.

Buzz checked his watch. 4:45; Howard Hughes was forty-five minutes late. It was a cool January day, light blue sky mixed with rain clouds over the Hollywood Hills. Howard got sex crazy in the winter and probably wanted to send him out on a poontang prowl: Schwab's Drugstore, the extra huts at Fox and Universal, Brownie snapshots of well-lunged girls naked from the waist up. His Majesty's yes or no, then standard gash contracts to the yes's--one-liners in RKO turkeys in exchange for room and board at Hughes Enterprises' fuck pads and frequent nighttime visits from The Man himself. Hopefully, bonus money was involved: he was still in hock to a bookie named Leotis Dineen, a six-foot-six jungle bunny who hated people of the Oklahoma persuasion worse than poison.

Raw, visceral, staccato, jazzy, and unapologetic. Ellroy often writes in dangling clauses, creating a conversational, matter-of-fact tempo that lends his prose the texture of concrete and asphalt. The end result is a masterpiece of crime-fiction. Ellroy's world is not a happy one--it is very much the hardboiled noir setting where no good deed goes unpunished, good folks are just saps waiting to be suckered, and the bad guys can (and do) win. When such a world is populated with characters like Meeks, Considine, Upshaw, and Smith, and described with streetwise prose in jazzy rhythms, the combined result is a masterpiece of American literature. Ellroy describes a bleak but essential facet of the American reality using an urban American cant. With The Big Nowhere Ellroy's song is a lament for the heroic, a funeral dirge played in saxophone jazz, much like the eponymous tune that a certain Coleman Healy would compose within the novel's pages. Ellroy has crystallized hardboiled noir into one single, perfect narrative that carries forth every theme of the genre to true fruition. It is not an archetypal noir tale--the archetypes are books like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep, or movies like Chinatown. Rather, The Big Sleep approaches the Platonic ideal. Ellroy has broken his chains and left the cave where Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett create shadows of noir upon the cavern wall, and realized the heights--or depths--which the genre can achieve.

The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy
Style A+
Substance A+
Overall A+

Book Review -- THE ELEPHANT VANISHES by Haruki Murakami

Reviewing short story collections is much more difficult than simply reviewing a novel because you have to assess each individual piece and then somehow analyze the entire collection as a whole. Yesterday's review of Dunsany's The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories went well enough, I guess, for me to take another stab at it, this time with 象の消滅 by 村上 春樹.

I've reviewed a novel by 村上 春樹 (Murakami Haruki) before, my first review for this blog: Wild Sheep Chase. This particular volume, 象の消滅 (Zou no Shoumetsu -- translated as "the/an elephant's disappearance") is a collection of short stories that showcase the author's Kafkaesque style.

This style is heavily influenced by a great deal of irreverent American fiction from the early 20th century. Murakami's written translations Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and My Lost City, everything by Raymond Carver, several works by Truman Capote, and most notably Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye. The Chandler connection is something I'm quite familiar with, being a fan of hardboiled noir, and his influence on Murakami's style comes through the story translations by Jay Rubin and Alfred Birnbaum. Almost all of Murakami's characters are cut from the same cloth--they smoke Hope regular cigarettes, drink, listen to vinyl records, possess a wide knowledge of music and haute cuisine, and live on the fringes of decent, acceptable Japanese society. However, this doesn't mean that they are all uniform--many of them are extremely unique and outstanding. However, a number of them seem to be little more than stand-ins for Murakami himself, or perhaps projections of Murakami's ideal character--a little bit Philip Marlowe, a little bit Nick Carraway, some Holly Golightly and Fred, and a dash of Holden Caufield, mixed in a uniquely Japanese environment.

Indeed, it is probably easier for an American to identify with Murakami's protagonists than it is for a Japanese person.

Nevertheless, they do suffer from the overwhelming regularity of their personalities--between novels and stories, there isn't a huge amount of difference between Murakami's protagonists. I have a difficult time believing that, if one would switch them between stories, they'd react any differently to their situations. As time grows on, this weakness becomes more and more apparent. In his novels, Murakami's heroes are somewhat better defined, but that is because it is much easier to develop a character's personality in a novel-length work than in a story of 25-30 pages. It isn't helped that Murakami almost universally utilizes first-person narration throughout his stories, but only further manages to make the protagonists appear identical to one-another.

The stories themselves are all infused with a sense of weirdness, often to the point of surrealism. The most outstanding ones are "The Second Bakery Attack," "Sleep," "The Little Green Monster," "TV People," "The Dancing Dwarf," and "The Elephant Vanishes." The more subtle ones are actually somewhat more powerful because of their subtlety-- "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning," "Lederhosen," "Barn Burning," "A Family Affair," "The Last Lawn of the Afternoon," and especially "The Silence."

I feel compelled to talk about all of these stories, and indeed I could go on at length, but I'll limit my analysis to just a few.

First, I will discuss the subtle stories, starting with "The Silence," my personal favorite. It describes a student, a boxing champion who almost never raised his hand against anyone, encountering a nemesis in middle school and developing an enmity which would last until high school graduation. This nemesis would avenge himself against the protagonist by indirectly framing the hero of tormenting and bullying another student until they committed suicide. The resulting silence, reflected in the title (沈黙 -- "Chinmoku"), is the silence of complete and total social ostracism. The protagonist effectively becomes an untouchable, invisible, inaudible person--his teachers and fellow students ignore him. This begins to effect him very negatively, especially since ostracism is an incredibly painful experience to a Japanese person. The Japanese value socialization far more deeply than Americans do, and membership in peer groups gives them a great deal of self-worth. Although Americans more-often-than-not are weak and willing to succumb to peer pressure, we have a deep (and sometimes grudging) respect for rebels and renegades who are strong enough to march to the beat of their own drummers and persist, even through friendlessness. Nevertheless, the protagonist manages to get through this experience, but it exacted a powerful spiritual price on his soul. He emerged stronger, but also much less trusting and faithful of his fellow humans, even his own wife and progeny.

This story is incredible, because it is a naked criticism of the herd mentality in Japanese society, the cowardice of individuals unable to break away from collective opinion to do what is right and just, and the use of ostracism as a social punishment. It did a lot to remind me of my own experiences in middle school, a very painful and difficult time for me. It has also comforted me a great deal during my time in Korea.

"No, what really scares me is how easily, how uncritically, people will believe the crap that slime like Aoki deal out. How these Aoki types produce nothing themselves, don't have an idea in the world, and talk so nice, how this slime can sway gullible types to any opinion and get them to perform on cue, as a group. And this group never entertains even a sliver of doubt that they could be wrong. They think nothing of hurting someone, senselessly, permanently. They don't take any responsibility for their actions. Them. They're the real monsters. They're the ones I have nightmares about. In those dreams, there's only the silence. And these faceless people. And then it all goes murky. And I'm dissolving and I'm screaming and no one hears."

That's some pretty powerful stuff, even in translation, and it is Murakami's finger wagging in the face of Japanese society as a whole. What is subtle here is the strangeness that is at work; the sense of the surreal is very subdued. However, Murakami's "j'accuse" is loud and unmistakable.

I think it is reasonable that I approach perhaps one more story, although there is something I'd like to say about almost all of them, but that would stretch the length of this review to absurd lengths. "The Little Green Monster" is about an eponymous creature that crawls from the ground and asks the protagonist to marry him. Her reaction is abject revulsion and disgust. This creature, despite its appearance, is actually a very gentle and empathic being, capable of feeling emotions and thoughts. When she realizes this, the heroine focuses her disgust and hate against the creature, effectively killing and dissolving it until not a trace of it is left.

Although there's a lot I want to say about this story, I'll try to keep things brief. This story is about hate, specifically the hatred of anything that is different or unfamiliar. The creature is weird and terrifying at first, but it means no harm and its distinctly human eyes should convey vulnerability and honesty. However, to the "heroine," they convey wrongness and are part of the overall discomfort that this creature's strangeness causes her to react with fear and revulsion. This revulsion is turned into pure hate and destroys the creature, a creature who came with peaceful intentions and love on his mind. Whether this story is about women in particular or humans in general, I can't really answer, but Murakami rarely chooses women as his protagonists, so that may say something. In almost every surrealist story that Murakami writes, things are symbols and metaphors for something else, and in this case, the creature is just that--the strange and unfamiliar. This is a meditation on fear, disgust, and hatred, and the darkness that hides in the human heart--darkness and hatred that can easily lead to murder if the conditions are correct.

Murakami's work is a rebellion against the ordinary. Indeed, he contentiously injects weirdness and absurdity into the immensely average lives of so many Japanese characters in order to shake them up. Through his stories, he aggressively critiques the everyday life of Japanese society--the uniformity and homogeneity, the disingenuousness of Japanese politeness, and the herd mentality that permeates Japanese social relations. Murakami wants to shake up the reader by shaking up the characters.

Murakami also wants to explore other themes that go beyond simple social criticism. He contemplates existentialism and the regularity of life--indeed even the meaningless of it and detachment from love and human contact (in such stories like "Sleep") or pondering what could or perhaps should have been but never was nor will be ("On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning"). Loss and nostalgia play definite roles in many of his tales, including the changes in relationships brought about by age, maturity, and marriage ("A Family Affair").

By-and-large, Murakami's stories hold up. They're not as profound as his novels, but they are much more immediate in their impact, and more visceral in the reactions they elicit. Despite his tendency toward repetitive protagonists, the secondary characters throughout his tales are often unique and interesting. The stories themselves are well-crafted. Murakami paces things well, narrating his tales and injecting elements of the strange or surreal at proper intervals to hook the reader and continue to draw them in. Curiosity is a major motivator in reading a Murakami story, and the author channels our curiosity extremely well. He's a master storyteller, and this collection stands as evidence of his ability to spin an effective yarn that not only keeps our attention, but challenges our assumptions and demands that we think a little bit deeper about ourselves and about our world and society.

象の消滅 (The Elephant Vanishes) by 村上 春樹 (Murakami Haruki)
Style B+
Substance A
Overall A-

Book Review -- THE SWORD OF WELLERAN and Other Stories by Lord Dunsany

It's been almost a month since my last review, but I've not been idle. I simply haven't been in the proper position to give a well-thought-out review of any of the material I've read in the past two months. I've had a lot of personal issues through which I've had to work and a lot of difficult choices I've had to make. However, I've the next two weeks off for winter vacation and intend to use those two weeks to get some more reading done and to bring my blog up-to-date on my reviews. Thus, I'd like to inaugurate this new year (belatedly) with a review of Lord Dunsany's The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories.

Edward J.M.D. Plunkett, the 18th Lord Dunsany, was an Irish fantasist who, in 1905, published The Gods of Pegāna, a collection of short stories set in a fantasy world. This collection would come to heavily influence J.R.R. Tolkien, among other authors. I should also comment that Dunsany was one of those authors cited by E. Gary Gygax as an inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons in the oft-cited "Appendix N" of the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide.

It's not difficult to see why Dunsany is such a heavy influence. His stories alternate between the mythic, the idyllic, and the nostalgically romantic. I've not read his earlier writings, such as The Gods of Pegāna, or any of his later works, such as 1912's The Book of Wonder, though it's reported to be far more nostalgically wistful.

The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories is infused with a sense of bittersweetness, a sort of pathos that the Japanese call 物の哀れ (mono no aware), a kind of empathy for things passing and ephemeral. It is this sense of passing that permeates all of the stories in this collection, and resurfaces in Tolkien's writings as the passing of all things fantastic and elven from Middle-Earth.

A great example can be found within the first, eponymous story in the volume, "The Sword of Welleran."

And now that the ardour of battle had passed away, the spirits of Merimna's people began to gloom a little, like their leader's, with their fatigue and with the cold of the morning; and they looked at the sword of Welleran in Rold's hand and said: "Not anymore, not any more for ever will Welleran now return, for his sword is in the hand of another. Now we know indeed that he is dead. O Welleran, thou wast our sun and moon and all our stars. Now is the sun fallen down and the moon broken, and all the stars are scattered as the diamonds of a necklace that is snapped off one who is slain by violence."

Thus wept the people of Merimna in the hour of their great victory, for men have strange moods, while beside them their old inviolate city slumbered safe. But back from the ramparts and beyond the mountains and over the lands that they had conquered of old, beyond the world and back again to Paradise went the souls of Welleran, Soorenard, Mommolek, Rollory, Akanax, and young Iraine.

These final paragraphs of the eponymous tale illustrate some of that lacrimae rerum that infuses nearly ever tale in this collection. In the moment of their victory, the citizens of Merimna have saved their city from destruction, but at the cost of their legendary heroes. They knew that those heroes would now never return to them, and though they had a new hero among them, Rold, they still wept for those heroes that they knew were forever gone.

Dunsany's pacing and the rhythm of his prose evoke the same archaic or mythic nostalgia as Tolkien would later do. When coupled with S.H. Sime's illustrations, the overall effect is incredibly powerful. The collaboration between the author and the illustrator, in this case, was incredible. Sime gives a form as mythical to Dunsany's words as the words themselves, especially for such stories as "The Fall of Babbulkund," "The Ghosts," and "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth."

The kinds of stories that Dunsany wrote varied throughout the volume. There are elements of fantasy that permeate all of the tales, and indeed, some of these tales are likely to be set in Pegāna, although many take place in the England and Ireland of our world. Specifically, the fantastic, mythic tales are "The Sword of Welleran," "The Fall of Babbulkund," and "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth." These are, generally, the most straightforward of the stories. "The Sword of Welleran" and "The Fortress Unvanquishable" are both tales of mythic heroism against overwhelming opposition with the aid of talismanic swords. "The Fall of Babbulkund," however, tells of an impossible city of incredible glory that is the jewel of all the world, and the travelers who seek to find it, only to discover its ruins. The description of the city that the travelers hear only whets their appetite further as they journey toward it, and each time it is described by someone fleeing the doom that will inevitably fall upon it for its decadence and excess.

"The Kith of the Elf-Folk" is the third story in the collection, and perhaps the saddest. It concerns an elf who desires to sing in a church and worship God, but to do so it would have to become mortal and acquire a soul. However, human life is one of pain and suffering, and the elf soon comes to regret its decision, and desires to rid itself of its soul so that it might return to its idyllic state. This story is laden with social commentary, especially regarding industrialism and wealth. Yet it is always viewed through the eyes of the elf who only partially understands its experience in the modern mortal world.

"The Ghosts" is another extremely interesting tale to consider. Modern rationality is pitted against the supernatural. Dunsany places a skeptical gentleman of learning in a haunted place with only his logic and reason to protect him against the malevolence of the spirits there. The conflict is resolved in favor of reason and cold, unfaltering logic--the province of mortal, living men. But the victory is as soulless and discomfiting as the haunt of the poltergeists.

The remaining pieces are also quite interesting, but easier to assess (often due to their shortness of length). "The Highwaymen" is a meditation on honor among thieves and the bonds of friendship and loyalty, even among reprehensible miscreants. "In the Twilight" describes a near-death experience and the revelation of the passage of time and distance when compared to the smallness of the human experience. "The Whirlpool" is an extended boast and warning by a powerful water-spirit and maelstrom, with a rather profound concluding sentence that demands deep consideration. Likewise, "The Hurricane" is a brief, two-page discussion between natural forces that ends with the heartbreak of one. "The Lord of Cities" regards the debate between different natural features in a sort of Aesopian tale, ending with the spider's triumph. "The Doom of La Traviata" illustrates the afterlife of a licentious courtesan. Finally, "On the Dry Land" is a very unhappy allegory of the kindness of death and the cruelty of love.

I cannot emphasize strongly enough the sense of lacrimae rerum that flows through all of these stories--some far more strongly than others. This entire volume seems to be one great meditation by Dunsany on the themes of loss and the bittersweet. He approaches this sense of loss from a much more natural standpoint than someone like Hemingway. Indeed, Hemingway's sense of loss was always personal, but Dunsany's loss is something else. He seems to view the world as growing less magical and more mundane--a theme that, as I wrote earlier, would resurface in Tolkien's work in force.

I can't really do this work much justice in the space that I have here on this blog. But there is a great deal among all of these stories to analyze. Each one is a different meditation that shares many of the same themes as the others, but is unique in its specific subject matter. And when I say unique, I certainly mean so. The subjects are all very different--ghosts and the rational, mythical cities being toppled, an allegory about love and death, an elf desirous of mortality so it can worship God, an unconquerable fortress, etc. To each, Dunsany applies similar themes, and this gives the stories far greater meaning. Man is mortal and temporary, but that mortality is juxtaposed against the passage of myth and magic with the advance of the modern, the industrial, and the coldly rational--all things that are within the domain of Man. Dunsany wrestles with this dichotomy as a good romanticist should.

The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
Style A+
Substance A+
Overall A+

Book Review -- A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ by Walter M. Miller Jr.

This December has been extremely sparse for me when it comes to posting and for this, I guess, apologies are in order. Nevertheless, I'd finished this particular novel for almost the entire month, so there's little excuse for the tardiness of this review.

Having flown as a tailgunner during the Second World War and participated in the destruction of the ancient Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, Walter M. Miller Jr.'s novel, A Canticle for Leibowitz, is a product of his subsequent meditations on war, knowledge, and faith in the wake of his wartime experiences. The only novel Miller ever published which garnered any significant literary attention, A Canticle for Leibowitz wrestles with several conflicts which are far more poignant today than even were during the early 1960s when the novel was first published.

Before setting pen to paper, Miller had explored a number of themes in short stories published in science-fiction magazines. Among these, he especially focused on the ideas of technological regression and orders of priests that would preserve knowledge against the ravages of time and human ignorance. His experience writing this sort of struggle, combined with post-apocalyptic literature (born from the growing awareness in the 1960s of MAD), his faith and Catholic background, and his own reservoir of memories from World War II, would coalesce into a short story that would become the first segment of A Canticle for Leibowitz.

A Canticle for Leibowitz was originally three novelettes that were originally published in F&SF in the mid-1950s. This is evidenced by the subtle shifts in writing style between the three segments. After heavy editing, the three sections were sewn together into one single narrative of an abbey constructed 600 years after a "Flame Deluge" (read: nuclear holocaust) and continuing for a millennium thereafter. This abbey, the eponymous Abbey of St. Leibowitz, is the actual protagonist of the tale, and the people around it are all supporting cast. The first segment, "Fiat Homo" (i.e. "Let There Be Man") , chronicles the "miraculous events" which lead to the canonization of the former Beatus Leibowitz into the roll of saints. The second, "Fiat Lux" ("Let There Be Light") describes simultaneous struggles that could shape the destiny of the abbey and determine the way knowledge is preserved and disseminated in the future. The final section, "Fiat Voluntas Tua" ("Thy Will Be Done"), describes the distant future, where man is once again reaching beyond the boundaries of the Earth, but is also poised to destroy himself in another Flame Deluge.

One of the most obvious conflicts that Miller wrestles with is that of faith and knowledge. The reader is well aware that Leibowitz was originally a Jew and an engineer in the employ of the U.S. military. However, a series of seemingly "miraculous" coincidences (a chance discovery of articles in a sealed bunker having once belonged to Leibowitz, for example) result in his canonization as a saint in the Catholic Church. This is an extreme irony that should, by no means, go unnoticed. The presence of the mysterious, eternal old Jew that wanders throughout the three sections should rivet the audience's attention on this irony. There's almost a childish ignorance with which the monks handle the newly discovered articles which some might see as mocking. However, I do not (see below). Francis' character is purposely simple and unintelligent, but Miller is certainly not expressing the entirety of the abbey as being as childishly dull. Their knowledge is limited, which is why they work so diligently to preserve what little has survived.

Miller isn't simply presenting a simplistic dichotomy of knowledge vs. faith. The conflict is one of method and attitude, as well as control. This is very much personified through the character of Thon Taddeo, a brilliant young scholar who is nephew of the Mayor of Texarkana (an incredibly powerful kingdom). He achieves the privilege of examining the library of the Abbey of St. Leibowitz, where the only copies of many materials from the world before the Flame Deluge are preserved.

The conflict between preservation and application of knowledge emerges as the highlight of the second segment, and is, indeed, the pivot point upon which the entire novel turns. Thon Taddeo seems to predict the more modern and vocal atheist scientific thinkers of our own era, such as Richard Dawkins. Although Thon Taddeo does not claim atheism outright, he directly challenges the faith of the monks by attacking the very core of their mission--the preservation of knowledge. He embodies the hubris of secular scholarship and scientific achievement.

"Tomorrow, a new prince shall rule. Men of understanding, men of science shall stand behind his throne, and the universe will come to know his might. His name is Truth. His empire shall encompass the Earth. And the mastery of Man over the Earth shall be renewed. A century from now, men will fly through the air in mechanical birds. Metal carriages will race along roads of man-made stone. There will be buildings of thirty stories, ships that go under the sea, machines to perform all works.

"And how will this come to pass?" He paused and lowered his voice. "In the same way all change comes to pass, I fear. And I am sorry it is so. It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world." --pp. 214

Thon Taddeo's choice of "prince" is not coincidental. That Thon Taddeo also repeatedly refers to Mayor Hannegan of Texarkana as "prince" should not go unnoticed by the reader. Miller was steeped in Catholic lore. By invoking the word "prince," Miller is calling our attention to Ephesians 6:12, which states that a Christian's war is against principalities, powers, and the forces of darkness, not against flesh and blood. The choice of the word "prince" also has a Machiavellian resonance, which will be further expressed in "Fiat Voluntas Tua."

Miller strips Thon Taddeo of his hubris and pride throughout "Fiat Lux." In a later chapter, Thon Taddeo attempts to argue that the species of Man that caused the Flame Deluge was not the species of human that inhabits the post-apocalyptic world. The Abbot rightly dresses him down, accusing him of attempting to distance himself and his colleagues and their scientific achievements from the achievements that caused the Deluge. Dom Paolo, the Abbot, argues with Thon Taddeo that such knowledge must be kept from mankind "until he is wise," and that once science and technology have tied themselves to the terrestrial and the political, then another Flame Deluge is inevitable.

Brief anger flared in the old priest's eyes. "It's time you met our founder, I think," he growled, pointing to the carving in the corner. "He was a scientist like yourself before the world went mad and he ran for sanctuary. He founded this Order to save what could be saved of the records of the last civilization. 'Saved' from what, and for what? Look where he's standing--see the kindling? That's how little the world wanted your science then, and for centuries afterward. So he died for our sake. When they drenched him with fuel oil, legend says he asked them for a cup of it. They thought he mistook it for water, so they laughed and gave him a cup. He blessed it and--some say the oil changed to wine when he blessed it--and then: 'Hic est enim calix Sanguinis Mei,' and he drank it before they hung him and set him on fire. Shall I read you a list of our martyrs? Shall I name all the battles we have fought to keep these records intact? All the minks blinded in the copyroom? for your sake? Yet you say we did nothing with it, withheld it by silence."

"Not intentionally, "the scholar said, "but in effect you did--and for the very motives you imply should be mine. If you try to save wisdom until the world is wise, Father, the world will never have it."

"I can see the misunderstanding is basic!" the abbot said gruffly. "To serve God first, or to serve Hannegan first--that's your choice."

"I have little choice, then," answered the thon. "Would you have me work for the Church?" The scorn in his voice was unmistakable. --pp. 224-5

How similar to the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens does Thon Taddeo sound! He nakedly prefers science to serve a selfish, venal master who cannot even sign his own name. His scorn for religion is incredible. He identifies religion with ignorance and darkness--an identification that is quite prevalent in American "common knowledge" today. Thon Taddeo puts his faith in science and technological advancement and erroneously believes that humans will not repeat the Flame Deluge again.

This results in the advanced setting of 3781, in which the Mayorate of Texarkana rules much of North America and is on the brink of nuclear war with a fierce rival power in Asia. Meanwhile, the abbot and monks of St. Leibowitz prepare to send a ship with their entire archive and the next Pope to a distant colony and continue on. It is in this chapter that the struggle between science and religion unites with a broader overall struggle between ethics and morality--especially regarding the euthanasia of fallout survivors who suffer from a lethal dose of radiation. The callous disregard with which the Mayorate of Texarkana authorizes doctors to prescribe euthanasia for "hopeless cases" disgusts Abbot Zerchi, and he forbids the clinic that sets up in his abbey to hand out euthanasia slips.

The names of the Abbots are as interesting as their personalities. Miller is astute and carefully sets up a scenario of beginning-to-end for the earth. "Fiat Homo" is the rebirth of the world, as the title ("Let There Be Man") suggests. Abbot Arkos' name hearkens back to the Book of Genesis, since his name is drawn from the ancient Greek work ἀρχή meaning "origin," "beginning," "first cause." Abbot Arkos is plagued by doubts regarding the enrollment of Leibowitz among the canonized saints. Dom Paolo, who dominates "Fiat Lux," is a much different character, who stands at a crossroads between ages. He battles his physical ailments valiantly in order to secure a future for the Abbey of St. Leibowitz and the Church as well. Abbot Zerchi closes the book by dominating "Fiat Volantus Tua" with his unwavering moral courage and determination to do what he believes is right, no matter the cost. The alphabetic play from A to Z in the names reflects Miller's speculative future as having a definite beginning, as well as a most certain end.

Throughout the novel, there also appears a certain old, weatherbeaten Jewish man who surfaces in each segment of the novel. He is still searching for the Jewish Messiah, and is apparently deathless (perhaps due to a mutation from radiation). Through him, Miller invokes the legends of the Wandering Jew of legend. However, he puts a very different spin on the character than is found in medieval folklore. The Jew (who is called Benjamin by Dom Paolo) assists Brother Francis' discovery of the hidden fallout shelter and its contents by scrawling "צל" (Hebrew letters tsade and lamedh) on the entrance--events which lead directly to Leibowitz's canonization.

I feel I should also mention how Miller handles mutation in this novel. Especially at the end, when mankind has fully realized and rediscovered the fruits of its technological manifest destiny, the children of the first Flame Deluge still walk among the unaffected, a poignant irony as the Mayorate of Texarkana stands on the brink of participating in a second Flame Deluge. Much of this is encapsulated in Rachel, the infant unconscious second head that grows from the shoulders of the elderly Mrs. Grales. Mrs. Grales begs for Rachel to be baptized, even though she has never been conscious. Abbot Zerchi is witness to Mrs. Grales'/Rachel's transformation at the end, in which Miller seems to suggest symbolically (through Rachel that is) that the mutants shall inherit the Earth.

Importantly, Miller reminds us of the role of the Catholic Church as a preserver of knowledge. The erroneous image of the Dark Ages after the collapse of Rome being a time of widespread ignorance is prevalent in the atheist forum. But that is simply so much propaganda. The reality is that the Church played a vital role in preserving knowledge through scriptoria. The statement that history is written by the victors is largely false--history is written by the literate who care. This is the reason we have lavish histories of the "barbarian" Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England, but no histories of the various Celtic nations of pre-Roman Gaul or the advanced kingdoms of medieval sub-Saharan Africa. The truth is that without the Catholic Church, Western European history would have been as blank and empty as other "barbarian" peoples'.

Ronald Numbers says in Myths and Truths of Science and Religion that there is no evidence that "the Church prohibited autopsies and dissections during the Middle Ages" nor "killed off ancient science" nor "suppressed the growth of natural philosophy." The Age of Enlightenment was made entirely possible by the preservation of knowledge provided by the Catholic Church during the whole of the medieval period.

Miller taps us on our shoulder and sets his Abbey of St. Leibowitz forth as an encapsulation of the entire Church during this so-called "Dark Age." Their struggle to preserve knowledge and the meticulous care they take in copying manuscripts and illuminating them is folded into their faith. From one angle, this reverence for the knowledge, even if poorly understood (such as Francis' illuminated copy of the circuit blueprint), may seem absurd, as if Miller were mocking his subjects. However, Miller understands the power of ritual and symbolism, especially in the Catholic faith. This deep reverence ensures care and preservation of the original materials. Miller doesn't shrink from the negative side-effects, such as the conflict in the abbey over the lighting machine borne from a sentiment that preservation of knowledge has nothing to do with application. Nevertheless, Miller boldly confronts our assumptions regarding darkness, stupidity, ignorance, and the Church. Indeed, the Abbey of St. Leibowitz had been singularly responsible for building and maintaining the school in the nearby town of Sanly Bowitts (which had "achieved a fantastic literacy rate of eight percent") in "Fiat Lux."

There is much more to write about this novel. It's a immense masterpiece--carefully written and revised by its author. Miller's work is rife with hidden meanings and carefully crafted writing. His characterization is phenomenal. Each person is fully defined and realized. Nevertheless, the most important character of the story is the Abbey itself, and its inhabitants create a picture of a bastion of faith, determination, curiosity, humility, and moral courage on its behalf. Miller's prose is adequate, although in "Fiat Lux" (and moreso in "Fiat Volantus Tua") he digresses into lengthy passages in which characters ruminate on the fate of mankind and the destiny of the Abbey a bit much. Regardless, this novel is a deep and multi-layered work of exquisite genius, and certainly demands a re-read sometime in the near future. It definitely deserves to be enrolled in the literary canon.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Style B+
Substance A+
Overall A

History Book -- CARNAGE AND CULTURE by Victor Davis Hanson

I'm a big fan of Victor Davis Hanson as many of you are aware. Well, apparently, though it was a dominant force in the world of military history for about ten years, his theories seem to have drawn a great deal of poignant criticism from some key military historians, particularly John A. Lynn, author of Battle: A History of Combat and Culture, although he has been supported by the esteemed John Keegan, author of The Face of Battle.

One of the errors that most readers and analysts seem to make is to assume that Hanson is arguing for the "universal soldier." He is, in fact, not, in my opinion. What he is doing is, from a classical perspective, analyzing trends in the way Westerners fight (particularly against non-Westerners) and draws a number of conclusions from this. His basic thesis is that there are a number of factors that have been embedded in Western culture ever since the Graeco-Roman era. These provide a solid bedrock of cultural heritage which we unconsciously draw upon when we wage war. These factors are political freedom, capitalism, individualism, democracy, scientific inquiry, rationalism, and open debate.

I would agree.

First, let me assess Hanson's primary text on this subject, Carnage and Culture. It is this book that draws the lion's share of criticism, perhaps justly so. Hanson begins with the concepts of freedom, decisive battle, and the concept of the citizen-soldier, and cites a number of sample battles, Salamis, Gaugamela, and Cannae as examples. Then he moves on to landed warriors, rationalism, and scientific inquiry and capitalism, at Poitiers, Tenochtitlan, and Lepanto, respectively. He finishes with discipline, individualism, and open debate at Rourke's Drift, Midway, and the Tet Offensive. Each battle showcases one of these traits, and is used as a vehicle to illustrate how (often) that trait intermingles with the others in order to create a cultural mindset within the fighters and the army itself.

This tactic of showcasing certain battles is very strong in some areas, and weak in others. Gaugamela is a great example of decisive battle, but it doesn't demonstrate how that is a common concern of Western commanders and cultures. An entire book could be written solely on the trait of decisive battle, and still have solid counter-attacks that the concept was born in the modern era that produced von Clausewitz. Similarly, the chapter on Poitiers is especially weak in demonstrating how landed infantry are superior, as well as how they are a constant throughout Western warfare. Actually, in my opinion, landed infantry, much like decisive battle, aren't so much constants, but ideals, and indeed, I would have chosen several battles from the Hundred Years' War (a Western vs. Western conflict) over any other engagement as a prime example of what landed yeoman infantry are capable of on the battlefield (despite the fact that they were mostly archers and not shock infantry).

This is actually Hanson's greatest weakness--he doesn't seem to realize that he's discussing ideals. He admits that Western armies don't always fight in a "Western style," and in this he is correct. What he needs to clarify is that these ideals are embedded into Western culture as part of our Graeco-Roman heritage.

This idea of a cultural heritage from Greece and Rome is very much a part of the classical historian's mindset, and would seem extremely foreign to the new researcher of cultural history or cultural studies, who, in a quite postmodern or Foucaultian manner, would prefer to see history as a series of disconnected epistemes/discursive formations bereft of continuity. To the classical historian, this is an absurd concept, because we see influences of the Bronze Age directly impacting the thought-processes of later Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greeks through myth, story, and heroic epic--these periods were not disconnected, and not even the break of the Dark Ages of Greece could wipe out cultural memory.

According to Chester G. Starr, former adviser to my former adviser (Steven Sidebotham), in his Origins of Greek Civilization, Western civilization is unique because of it's Greek heritage of secular thought and rationalism--ideas that evolved during the Archaic and into the Classical periods, and are not found elsewhere. This is a common thread throughout the studies of ancient Mediterranean cultures, and seeing that Hanson is a classicist, it is unsurprising that he would have adopted just this sort of concept.

The strongest chapters in the book are the first (Salamis), and the fifth through eighth (Tenochtitlan, Lepanto, Rourke's Drift, and Midway respectively), and especially the eighth (Midway). I'm familiar with some of Hanson's sources, especially the firsthand work by Fuchida Mitsuo, entitled Midway: The Battle that Doomed Japan, which, from a Japanese perspective, clearly makes Hanson's point about individual initiative for him. Initiative is also observed throughout most of the other battles cited--as I've said, Hanson wants to emphasize the continuity aspect of these cultural characteristics.

The final chapter on the Tet Offensive (open debate) compares the stasis of Athens during the early Peloponnesian War to America during the late 1960s and the Vietnam War. While the comparison is apt, and does a lot to prove his point about internal dissent, he turns it into an indictment of the American media system and journalistic sensationalism that essentially lost America the war (although Westmoreland's foolish strategies and reluctance to take the war to North Vietnam were mentioned). This chapter could have been stronger if Hanson's own political agenda (one I albeit agree with, however) could have been put aside so that the author could focus more on how political dissent strengthens Western fighting capacity. This chapter actually seems at odds with itself, describing how open dialogue can be crippling (admittedly, he cites these cases as extreme), whereas in previous chapters he likened open dialogue to individualism and described how it increased the effectiveness of fighting forces at previous battles. Rather than citing it as a trait, I'd label open debate as a consequence of individualism and freedom within Western culture.

Hanson's other weakness is in portraying Western culture as monolithic, despite his own admonitions that it is, by far, not. In my opinion, he over-plays his hand throughout the book, leading to responses like Lynn's Battle. Lynn isn't going to tackle this from a classical perspective, that much is certain from his book's preface. I agree with Hanson that there are a number of Graeco-Roman cultural traits that have been passed down through Western civilization--traits which have, at times, been suppressed or superseded by the demands of the moment or the time period. I would argue that often these traits are mere ideals, not often or always realized, or perhaps realized only in parts of the Western world from time-to-time. However, the undeniable truth (in my opinion) is that these traits continually do surface, and typify Western civilization. They are a part of us, whether we like it or not.

The reason they surface is, I think, due to something my friend, Kevin, has said:

Hanson is highlighting the way Westerners think. Reducing it, or bending it, to something larger or smaller, completely misses his point. And thus throws his implicit warnings for the land of the free, right out the window.

I would honestly have to agree with him. It is a lot about how we think, but how we think is shaped by our culture. Nevertheless, not all of us think like this, and not all of the time, either. Personally, after living in Korea for 2 1/2 years, I can certainly say that individualism, open dialogue/disagreement, rationalism, concepts of civic militarism, and egalitarian freedom are quite alien to non-Westerners. Yes, South Korea is supposedly a democracy, and there is supposed to be discontent with the current Korean president, but these ideas do not and cannot translate to the individual in everyday life--which is Hanson's key point. Many of these battles were won because of the individual decisions to buck the system or to innovate. These are certainly not unique to Westerners solely, but the ease with which we perform these actions is part-and-parcel with our culture and with our success.

이순신 (Lee Sun-shin), Korea's greatest national hero, in many ways embodies these ideas of individual initiative, rationalism, and civic militarism. And while he died a hero, he was despised, hated, and the Confucian mandarins in the Choson court constantly tried to grind him down and make him stay in his place. He was even thrown into prison. Here in the East, this sort of thinking is anomaly and anathema to the native culture. For us, it is our greatest strength.

History Book -- BATTLE: A HISTORY OF COMBAT AND CULTURE by John Lynn

This book has got too much going on in it for me to just dive head-first into a review of it without sitting back and trying to organize it in some fashion--hence the headings. So, I'll begin with the purpose of the book, Lynn's model, and round it out with some of the interesting claims that he makes regarding a variety of hot topics throughout his work.

The Premise
John Lynn set out with this book to refute the idea of the "universal soldier" (with direct reference to the Buffy Sainte-Marie song). In addition, his research brought him into conflict with a number of other premises and theories regarding military history, especially Victor Davis Hanson's idea of a Western Way of War, as espoused in his Carnage and Culture (my thoughts on that work are here).

Hanson's argument is that a number of characteristics are consistent in Western military culture throughout history, from the Greeks to the modern age. These include technological superiority through free-market capitalism, individualism, enfranchisement in society, discipline, a desire for decisive shock combat, rationalism, open debate, and democratic ideals. As I stated in my commentary on Carnage and Culture, I think Hanson overplayed his hand. Well, Lynn zeroes in on this, specifically, and presents an attempt at refuting Hanson throughout this book.

The Model
Thoroughly outlined in his Appendix, Lynn describes a model for analyzing military culture at any point in time and space. He essentially divides culture into a relationship between the discourse of war (the ideals, rhetoric, and concept of what a culture envisions as war and how to conduct it) and the reality of war (the actual waging of a war). These two aspects of military culture are in a constant dialogue with one-another, and each has an impact on the other.

For example, Lynn discusses the medieval period as a great example of the discourse on war being different from the reality. The discourse on war envisions a romantic, chivalric form of armed contest between knights. The reality is the raiding of civilian targets to force the enemy out of his castles and into the field--behavior brought about by the difficulties in logistics and payment of the armies. When the two forms of warfare come into dialogue with one-another, the reality of war is found to be so repugnant that a "perfected" form of war is created--the tournament.

Similarly, the Napoleonic discourse on war clashed with the reality of war at the opening of the 20th century. Decisive, frontal assaults were useless in the face of trench warfare and machine-guns. As Bloch predicted, wars turned into great sieges. Maneuver had to be introduced into warfare, which eschews decisive frontal shock and attrition in favor of penetrating a weak point, bypassing strong points, and tearing apart the enemy from the inside.

The Strengths
Lynn tackles a number of Hanson's poorly held assumptions, such as the idea that the "Western Way of War" has been constant. This needed to be directly confronted, and Lynn does a good job at meeting it head-on. He certainly points out a great many instances where specific characteristics that Hanson attributes to Western warfare were absent, such as among the chivalric nobility during the medieval period, the Enlightenment armies of the 17th century, and the rigid model of Greek warfare.

Lynn also takes to task a number of other vital issues in military historiography, most notably the controversial analyses of racism in the conduct of the Second World War in the Pacific. This chapter is probably Lynn's best and most vital, since it is a case study of two vastly different cultures with irreconcilable discourses on warfare engaged in a merciless struggle. Lynn annihilates a number of charges regarding racism in the American decision to drop the atomic bomb, and addresses the controversies regarding the casualty projections for Operation Downfall.

Most important, however, is Lynn's application of his theoretical model to the conduct of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq, and his insistence that our discourse on warfare be altered to adjust to the realities of combat against terrorism in those countries. His advice is vital--Lynn sees our rejection of terrorism as a form of warfare to be a weakness in our ability to effectively combat it. This plays into the American failure in Vietnam a great deal. Hanson chalks up our loss in Vietnam to the media and discontent at home, citing battlefield victories, the swift recovery of our losses during the Tet Offensive, and massive numbers of Viet Cong and NVA casualties to our ability to adapt to guerrilla warfare, as evidence of our ability to have won that war. Lynn doesn't directly tackle Vietnam, although he clearly sees our inability to adapt our discourse on war to the reality of the Vietnamese people's situation as a major factor in the American defeat. In my opinion, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

The Weaknesses
Lynn's weakness, however, is that Hanson's thesis actually manages to hold true, regardless of the discourse of war. The reality of war usually favors the side with the greatest number of Hanson's "Western Warfare" characteristics. For example, Lynn fails to take into account the actual reality of the Battle of Crécy, which was won by a shield-wall of dismounted knights and the yeoman farmers of rural England wielding longbows--i.e. the enfranchised members of different strata in English society won the battle against the "noble, aristocratic, chivalric cavalry charges" by the "flower of French chivalry. This would repeat itself at the Battle of Poitiers and the Battle of Agincourt.

Lynn's examination of the Second World War also avoids Hanson's thesis when dealing with the reasons the Japanese discourse on war was less effective than the American discourse on war. While the chapter is a fantastic refutation of a number of arguments regarding the dropping of the atomic bomb and the impact of racism on American conduct in battle, it fails to address the strengths that Hanson ascribes to American military forces in comparison to the weaknesses of the Japanese in the American battlefield victories.

Lynn's treatment of the sepoy in British India actually misses Hanson's point entirely. The sepoy married his own culture's ideals of the kshatriya warrior-caste to more "Western" methods of discipline, shock infantry, high technology, enfranchisement, etc. Lynn has no explanation for why the British sepoy overcame similar units raised and equipped in the European style with similar technology and trained by European advisers, but commanded by native Indian regimes. Although I am not an expert, I would venture to guess that Hanson's argument for a Western Way of War holds more water than Lynn would like to believe, and it is the infusion of a Western military methodology into a native Indian ethos which adapted the kshatriya to Western war that enabled the East India Company to conquer the continent with the sepoy.

Most personally aggravating was Lynn's cursory examination of ancient Greek warfare. The Greeks practiced a limited form of warfare that was guided by principles of duty and honor laid out in The Iliad and The Odyssey, yes. But it was also a hedgehog meant to defend the yeoman farmer against barbarians and mounted nobles during the Greek Dark Ages, an anarchic period that followed the Mycenaean feudal era and preceded the rise of the polis. The warfare was limited because the stakes were limited, as was the technology. When the technology advanced and the stakes were higher, the discourse was by-and-large abandoned in favor of reality. The Athenians did not behave according to the Greek discourse very often during the Peloponnesian War, as is evidenced by their defeat of Spartan forces at Sphacteria.

To this end, Lynn doesn't seem to recognize that nations will fight wars at a level of intensity based on what is at risk. The Greek city-states were absolutely cut-throat and ignored rules whenever their entire polis was in jeopardy, for example. An examination of Geoffrey Blainey's The Causes of War may have benefited Lynn; it is quite possible that the decision to go to war not only effects the conduct of the war and the discourse of the war, but the reasons for fighting may even explain why wars can be limited in their scope and conduct. Compared to World War II, the Korean War was not fought realistically by either side. The war aims were not total victory, but themselves limited as a reflection of the nuclear threat. Thus, if the stakes between two Greek city-states are not survival, but a strip of farmland, limiting the scale of the conflict and the methods of combat is perfectly acceptable and reflects the reality of the situation at hand. Lynn doesn't tackle the issue of limitations-on-warfare-due-to-war-aims. The aims of a war have a great deal to do with the discourse, conduct, and reality of that war.

My Conclusions: Lynn vs. Hanson
The point I'm trying to make here is, simply, that Hanson's concept of a universal Western discourse on war illuminates a number of vital points regarding how, exactly, armies can effectively win wars--Hanson's Western Way of War seems to play more to the reality of war than to the discourse on war. In short, the army that is most adapted to the reality of war is the most likely to be victorious. And, if we adopt Hanson's characteristics as the most effective forms of discourse when compared to reality, Western militaries are more likely to adapt their discourses on warfare to the reality of the situation.

Consider--the Enlightenment armies of the 17th century were largely disenfranchised peasants who had no individual initiative and were not permitted to question their officers. Compare this to the sudden reformation of the French Army during the Revolution, and their astounding victories against old Enlightenment-style armies of the passing era. Why did the Revolutionary armies win? Because they exemplified a number of Hanson's lauded Western characteristics; they were comprised of newly-enfranchised citizens, officers trusted their subordinates, and individuals took initiative when they saw opportunities to advance their forces to victory. The reality is that enfranchised "peasant armies," if disciplined and motivated, will fight better than similarly equipped and disciplined conscripts and disenfranchised dirty infantrymen that are despised by their own officers.

Hanson is correct in his analysis from a specific perspective--the most effective armies in history have been the ones that display the traits he describes. It also just so happens that those traits crop up most often in Western militaries. The truth is, many of these traits were laid down for us by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and although Lynn is correct--time, technology, and space alter military discourse--I think Hanson's claim that these are a part of our overall Western heritage is 100% correct as well, for the simple fact that Hanson's traits constantly resurface in the most effective militaries. Hanson simply overplayed his hand by implying that these traits are axiomatically omnipresent throughout Western militaries across space, time, and technology. Lynn rightly attacks this idea of a military continuum--there is a vast amount of cultural disconnection between the Graeco-Roman discourses on warfare (which themselves evolved and shifted due to changing socio-political and economic situations) and the discourses of the medieval period (which were more a product of the ancient Germanic warrior-codes and bardic saga with a strong infusion of Christianity).

Lynn's discourse-reality model is a vital contribution to the field of military history. In my opinion, it fails to unseat Hanson's concept of Western military strength, but it does pinpoint a great many flaws in Hanson's argument that must be addressed and accounted for. What honestly needs to occur is for Hanson to go back to the drawing board and revise his own theory in light of Lynn's scholarship. I'm not advocating for a Hegelian dialectic, here, however, I do believe that Hanson's theories need to be taken on socratically, in order to purge them of error. Hanson's theory holds a lot of water, and Lynn doesn't refute it entirely successfully. What Battle does, however, is demand a revision of Hanson's theory that is much more solid and reflective of reality.