Heir to the Empire

I remember going to a friend’s house as a kid and seeing some Star Wars books on his family’s bookshelves.  I remember being confused by that since I knew there were only three movies, and the titles on the spines of these books had nothing to do with the movies except the “Star Wars” part.  I did not understand at all that there was an entire fictional world that nerds had created beyond the original three movies.  It really didn’t interest me, so I didn’t think much of it until more recently, when some people in my family got into Star Wars and re-opened the question of what is now referred to as something like the “expanded universe” (Star Wars nerds somewhere will happily tell me I’ve used incorrect terminology, I’m sure).  As I became acquainted with Star Wars Rebels, I was introduced to a villain named Thrawn, who was a great bad guy in the animated series, and I didn’t know that he had actually existed for a long time in some of those books I saw at that friend’s house.

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn (ISBN: 978-0-593-35876-4) is the first in a trilogy (seems writers and publishers have long found trilogies to be very marketable) featuring a blue-skinned, red-eyed humanoid alien as the brains behind what is left of the Empire after Luke Skywalker and the Rebellion had conquered the Empire in the movies.  Thrawn is written as an incredibly smart military and political genius who not only knows the art of war and diplomacy, but is also a student of culture, particularly the arts.  He uses this knowledge to help him understand his enemies and stay one step ahead of them.  The book also includes movie favorites like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, Lando Calrissian, and others.  They have their own adventures fighting off remnants of the Empire (commanded by Thrawn), dealing with pirates (the underworld always being a Star Wars staple), and fighting with new enemies like the ape-like Rukh or the human Mara Jade.  Rukh and his species are ruthless killers, but not quite up to the task of defeating Wookies, and Leia ends up making an uneasy truce with one of the aliens since they are all loyal to Darth Vader and Leia is his daughter.  Luke Skywalker, Han, Lando, and the famous droids R2-D2 and C-3PO are captured by Mara Jade and other pirates, spend time negotiating with them, and eventually get away by banding together with the pirates to fight off Imperial forces aided by an imposter Jedi.  The last big event in the book is Thrawn’s forces attempting to attack a freight depot and make off with hundreds of ships for his depleted Imperial navy.  With Luke Skywalker’s aid, that attack is more or less thwarted, but since the books is the first in a series, it feels very much left open and unresolved.

I thought the book was OK.  Other Star Wars books I’ve read, like the Ahsoka book, were better.  I found that this one simply didn’t hold my attention.  To me, that’s saying something because I came in already thinking Thrawn was a pretty cool character.  Maybe it’s because there were other storylines?  I was also seriously underwhelmed with the writing.  I thought it was to repetitive and cliché.  One does not need to hear about the same facial expression every time a character thinks or does the same thing.  The reader gets it after the first couple times.  I thought that maybe a different way of saying things or some different words could’ve been used.  I know it’s painfully obvious when a writer has been using a thesaurus, but a little variety couldn’t hurt.  I think I wasn’t too impressed with the sections about the old Star Wars characters.  This story would’ve been better had it been all new, not the writer’s take on characters that every person has their own ideas about.  Fans who are all in will likely like the book, but for us who just kind of hover on the edges of Star Wars fandom, it was forgettable.

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Seven Miracles That Saved America

Although the 1980s brought about the fall of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern Europe, as well as the decline of many of its proxies elsewhere in the world), that was not until the tail end of that wild decade.  The first nine years had a world very clearly defined by the West, led by the United States of America, and the Communists, led by the Soviet Union.  America’s special role in the world was well understood by almost everyone in the world.  Later, this came to be called “American exceptionalism,” but at the time, it was simply known as “America.”  This America was built on a firm foundation of inspired men from Columbus to the great president of the 1980s, Ronald Reagan.  In between, there were the Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, and the Greatest Generation.

Seven Miracles That Saved America: Why They Matter and Why We Should Have Hope (ISBN: 978-1-60641-144-5) by Chris and Ted Stewart explores singular events and unique people in American history that, had things unfolded even slightly differently, could have resulted in a vastly different America.  All of these events and people hinge on such a fine line that it is easy to see that they were influenced by God.  The miracles that the authors review in detail are the following: Columbus and Columbus’s discoveries, Jamestown, a summer fog during the Revolutionary War, the advent of the American Constitution, Abraham Lincoln and the battle of Gettysburg, the battle of Midway, and Ronald Reagan and how the assassination attempt against him failed by less than one inch (just a little bit more and the bullet kills him).  Each one of the miracles is reviewed in detail by the authors and the scene is set through some historical fiction.  At the end of each section, the authors ask some questions that invite the reader to think about what would have happened in each of these situations had things — and usually it’s quite an exhaustive list of things — turned out even slightly different.  For example, with the foggy morning during the Revolutionary War that allowed American troops to withdraw and regroup without suffering losses, it really was a question of a few hours and things could have been vastly different.  The same could be said about the battle of Midway.  There, it really was more like minutes since one of the pilots flying and trying to locate Japanese fleet only had minutes before needing to return to base without running out of fuel.  At the last possible minute, though, he spotted the Japanese ships, and that allowed the Americans to attack first, which proved critical in the battle, along with other decisions and rare direct hits during the bombing runs.  The point being made is that there were just too many decisions at so many different points along the way that for those who recognize that God has a role in human existence, these events were miraculous and they resulted in an exceptional country that has long been a light on a hill.

The book was an interesting read and presented some things that I was either not very familiar with or, in the case of the foggy day during the Revolutionary War, had not heard of at all.  I liked the detailed reviews of the events and people, which helped make the case that the events really were miraculous.  I think the case was presented effectively.  I found the concluding chapter, where the authors proposed that God’s intervention in the past likely meant God would intervene in the future to also be sound analysis, especially as it was paired with God’s discussion with Abraham about preserving the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorra as long as even a few righteous remained there.  What I found to be less interesting was the historical fiction (not one of my favorite genres to begin with, admittedly) that was used as a scene setter.  It seemed to me that it was there simply to make this more of a book-length affair, and I think it would have been possible to find solid, historical material to fill in a lot of the space taken by the fictionalized accounts.  A shorter book would have also been acceptable as I believe the points were adequately made.  In any case, it was a great reminder of America’s exceptionalism and of our individual responsibilities to help keep it that way by being part of the righteous that God is willing to preserve.

 

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Master and Commander

Life at sea has captured people’s imaginations since the beginning of time judging by the number of novels written about seafarers.  Shipwrecks, battles, pirates, and journeys to exotic locales make for good stories, both when it’s history and when it comes in the form of a novel or a movie.  I read stories like Treasure Island and Carry On, Mr. Bowditch.  It was a world I was not really familiar with, coming from a land-locked state, but with the danger, discovery, and adventure, it was great reading.  In my teenage years, I saw the movie White Squall, which was a bit of a coming-of-age story, but the adventure of the sea and hard-knock learning made for a great story.  I also enjoyed the movie Master and Commander, which I saw in my early 20s.  I didn’t know that last movie was based on a set of rather well-known novels.

Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian (ISBN: 0-393-30705-0) is the first in what turned out to be a twenty-book series.  The novel starts off with the main protagonist, Jack Aubrey, being promoted and taking the helm of his own ship.  He finds a guy named Stephen Maturin to be the ship’s surgeon, and off the two main characters in the series go, sailing for the Royal Navy.  Their first duty is convoy escort, but having successfully completed that, they are given permission to cruise, looking for prizes (enemy ships, as the setting for the books is the Napoleonic Wars).  Aubrey leads his crew to a few successes, some minor, some much more significant.  Throughout, life aboard a ship and life in port are presented in life-like detail, right down to the ropes and pulleys aboard the ship.  While Aubrey and Maturin headline the action, the story includes the other officers and men aboard, giving a complete picture.  The story is loosely based on some actual events in the Royal Navy’s history.  When the crew is in port, one is also introduced into Captain Harte, Aubrey’s superior, and Harte’s wife, with whom Aubrey is having an affair.  That comes back to bite Aubrey toward the end of the novel, when he is prevented from getting any of his prize money, which is Harte’s way of getting back at him.

The book was an interesting novel.  I’d have to watch the movie again to compare it to the book (although the movie is based on the first three books in the series).  It was a bit technical at times, but it really fit into the story since the sailors had to explain things to Maturin, who was a landman.  The explanations helped non-sailors like myself, but I often found myself lost in discussions of ropes and sails.  The action scenes were good, though.  I liked the realistic nature of the story, too, which applied to life on land, at sea, and in all the various professions encountered.  It seemed that O’Brian knew his stuff.  Overall, I liked it enough that I’m interested in finding the second book.  I was surprised in a couple instances by language sailors are famous for since I didn’t think those words were usually printed in stuff mass marketed in the 1970s.

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The Days of the Consuls

In fact, this was a continuation of last year’s disturbance

which had never altogether ceased, but smoldered on in muffled silence,

waiting for a convenient excuse to erupt again.

As soon as one learns anything about the ex-Yugoslavia (commonly, but rather incorrectly referred to in the West as “the Balkans”), one hears about the Yugoslav writer Ivo Andrić.  Andrić was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina while it was under Austro-Hungarian rule.  He later published a number of works, the most famous being The Bridge on the Drina, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.  That book is usually thought of as part of a trilogy of books that tells all about the clash of civilizations that was a big part of Andrić’s life in Bosnia, home to four distinct ethnic groups who adhere to four different religious traditions, all under the reign of various foreign conquerors throughout history.

The Days of the Consuls by Ivo Andrić (ISBN: 978-86-6457-018-3), which has been published in English under the alternative titles of Travnik Chronicle and Bosnian Chronicle, fits right into Andrić's main motif, telling the story of the city of Travnik, which is medium-sized for Bosnia today, but was historically much more important as the seat of the Ottoman Empire in Bosnia, during a few short years while the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Napoleon’s France kept consuls in the town.  The story is told from an omniscient narrator point of view, but focuses largely on French consul, his entourage, and his interactions with the others in Travnik, be they local or outsider.  The French consul deals with being an outsider himself, shunned by the local Muslims and never really understood by the Ottoman representative, although their relationship was cordial.  He remains the enemy of the Austro-Hungarian consul, although he sees many similarities between the two men and carries on professional, if not friendly, relations with him.  The members of the consuls’ families and entourages are met with varying degrees of acceptance or disgust by those around them, including those from the local clergy.  The Muslim population seems to be the most vocal in their distaste for the outsiders, but the Orthodox, Catholic, and Jewish populations also steer clear and are distrustful of the changes the presence of the consuls seems to be ushering into their otherwise simple lives.  When Napoleon is finally defeated, the French no longer see the need for a consul in Travnik, and the French consul is recalled.  The Austrians also remove from Bosnia.  With all that has changed, all has remained the same.

I had always intended on reading Andrić’s so-called trilogy in the order they were published, but it didn’t happen thanks to the vagaries of translation.  I bought this book not being aware that it was the same book as the Travnik Chronicle.  All the same, I enjoyed it and still look forward to someday really pushing my brain to its limit by reading it in its original language.  More than once, while reading, I thought of Tolstoy and his sweeping historical epic, War and Peace.  This does not attain those heights, but I found the style to be very similar.  I enjoyed the thorough descriptions of people and place achieved through masterful use of language instead of relying, like so many modern authors, on cliché and overly vulgar and expressive language.  It might mean more to me because of my own extensive travel in the country and the familiarity inherent to reading about something one knows relatively well.  Andrić believed that Yugoslavia had a unique and uniquely turbulent past that presented many opportunities for learning, learning that would help people avoid the ethnic and religious conflict that has seemingly always plagued the region.  In the book, which is, in a way, plotless, as it simply chronicles the day-to-day lives of Travnik’s citizens, one can see this theme, but I would argue it is meshed with one that emphasizes similarities over differences, and that is the lesson, one that is, unfortunately, unheeded in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, and unheeded elsewhere.  Slightly different approaches to the same fears, concerns, and goals hindered all parties in the book from a more mutually beneficial co-existence.

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Star Wars: A New Dawn

The Star Wars franchise is interesting in that is has caught a firm hold of the imaginations of so many people.  Now that Disney owns it, the level of commercialization associated with it has, of course, skyrocketed.  One of the things Disney has done is make animated series that tie into their official, or canon, universe.  The second of these is called Star Wars Rebels.  It ran for four seasons, and I have watched most of the episodes (working through the fourth season as of this writing), thanks, in large part, to family members who find it to be pretty much the best thing ever.  The series has been better than I would’ve expected (other than the lamely rendered lightsabers, which are too thin and pointy).

Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller (ISBN: 978-0-553-39286-9) talks about how two of the main Rebels characters met and teamed up to fight the Empire.  A guy named Kanan is living out his life in anonymity, usually jumping from one job to another to stay ahead of anyone really getting to know him, mostly because he’s a little afraid of the Empire and because he’s really never known anything different.  His public image is that of a rough-and-tumble cowboy, piloting ships carrying explosives and fighting anyone who so much as looks at him crookedly.  However, he often finds himself helping people out of sticky situations, usually seemingly without thinking as it just seems to be a part of who he is.  Opposite him is Hera, a Twi’lek, a humanoid alien (basically a human with so-called head-tails), who is an excellent pilot and has already dedicated her life to fighting against the Empire, although she is not part of any truly organized effort.  Their worlds collide on a planet where the moon is the real draw because it can be mined.  Kanan saves a few people, having used the Force to keep a cave from collapsing on them, and so is looking for a way away from the planet to avoid detection as a former Jedi.  Hera comes to get some information from a guy who works for a Star Wars version of a signals intelligence agency.  They meet in a dark alley, fighting off the local gang bangers and protecting people in the process.  Eventually, rather begrudgingly (especially for Kanan), they’re drawn into a mission that involves smuggling things on board an Imperial ship, fighting a cyborg, and a few shoot-outs.  There’s lots of action, some Star Wars-style romance, and the necessary positive ending after all the damage is done along the way.  The result is that the groundwork is laid for Hera and Canan, no longer completely running from his Jedi past, leading a small team of rebels all over the galaxy, resisting the Empire whenever they get the chance.

Since the series has been a pleasant surprise, I figured the book would decent, and I was not disappointed.  In a way, it was predictable, and Kanan’s storyline was an awful lot like Ahsoka’s, but I still found the story fun to read, and there was enough to the plot to keep it interesting, including a number of minor characters that were developed sufficiently to make them a good part of the story.  Fans of the TV show will enjoy the book, but if there are Star Wars fans thinking of giving the TV show a try, this book would probably be good to read before watching.  It would make it a bit less predictable.  Finally, as with all things Star Wars, there were enough loose ends to make it very easy for someone to come along and write the next installment or a spin-off.

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Ahsoka

Star Wars was not a huge part of my childhood.  I had some friends who knew more about it than I did, but it really wasn’t part of what I grew up with.  My biggest Star Wars memory from my early childhood is that we had a Play-Doh® set that included molds for various Star Wars characters.  Since mushing lots of different colors of Play-Doh® together results in kind of an olive green, I think we probably had a pretty realistic Yoda.  In high school, I had a friend whose car had a dome light that popped out of the ceiling and could pivot around.  He referred to his car as Vader and this light as his lightsaber.  That’s about as close as I got to Star Wars for a while since it was something the popular kids liked, meaning I avoided it.  In college, a roommate was a big fan and tried to show us the prequels.  I fell asleep.  One of my other roommates powered through, but only because he thought Natalie Portman was hot.  This distance from one of the world’s largest franchises changed a couple years ago when, during Christmas break, we checked out the original movies, watched them, and the kids went nuts about them.  That hasn’t really subsided.

Ahsoka by E. K. Johnston (ISBN: 978-1-4847-8231-6) is the story of former Jedi Padawan, Ahsoka Tano (trained by no other than Darth Vader’s former self, Anakin Skywalker), no longer a Jedi, constantly on the run like others who had been Jedi or Jedi in training at the time of the infamous Order 66.  She has hopped from one outlandish Star Wars planet to another, always trying to steer clear of the Empire, but never really managing to do so.  Her background as a warrior and soldier is constantly catching up to her, too.  The book follows her adventures as she lands in another situation where her better nature and her military skills come in handy to help a few people fight against the oppression of the Empire.  She ends up, after overcoming an internal struggle between Ahsoka on the run and Ahsoka the Jedi, helping people from multiple planets, all the while fighting off evil Imperials, including the super creepy inquisitors, who care nothing for the people and planets they oppress.

This was my first-ever attempt at reading a Star Wars-related novel (although I had seen some of the original, now called the “Extended Universe,” when I was a kid on the shelves at others’ homes or in the library).  It was better than I expected, but, then again, I didn’t know what I expected.  I thought it was written just fine and included a couple decently memorable characters in addition to the eponymous heroine.  Her character was probably my favorite, though.  It was maybe a little obvious what was going to happen, but it didn’t detract from the story or make it boring.  Even when it’s fiction, it’s nice to see the good guys overcome the bad guys.  Like all things Star Wars, the book left plenty of open ends so people can come in and write sequels or make movies or produce cartoon series.  Fans of the Jedi will like the novel.

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Wonder

Bullying, as the word is used today, wasn’t a thing when I was a kid.  Kids got made fun of or teased, but bullying, as we knew it, was when some kids, usually physically larger and more developed, used their unusual size to threaten smaller or younger kids into doing their will, usually involving lunch money, milk money, or desserts.  They were also to be feared in gym, which seemed to involve a lot of dodgeball, where bullies could unleash their physical prowess by slamming balls into the heads of other kids.  Nowadays, a lot that would’ve been overlooked in my day or engendered a lesson about ignoring or walking away gets put into the category of bullying.  The one area where things are the same is the area of kids who look different or who are mentally handicapped.  That was a problem before and is a problem now.

Wonder by R. J. Palacio (ISBN: 978-0-375-86902-0), explores this latter form of bullying, but also the ability of some people to rise above it, in a short novel about a kid born with a number of physical birth defects who has decided it’s time to go to school with other kids.  He chooses to go to a private school, where he is confronted with all the problems one might expect for a kid facing the trouble of being both the new kid and the kid with some unusual facial features.  There are a few kids who are genuine in their interactions with him from day one, but for others, it takes some time.  Everything in the book is narrated from a first-person point of view, although the first person sometimes changes, as the reader hears from Auggie’s sister and friends on occasion.  They have their own unique takes on the situation and show that there is some internal struggle involved in doing the right thing.  By the end of the book, most of kids have come around to accepting Auggie, and even come to his defense when some kids from another school decide to pick on him at an overnight outing (a very real phenomenon, as most people feel free to pick on their own friends, families, hometowns, schools, etc., but won’t put up with a single negative word by an outsider).  The main character himself has also done some maturing, learning that despite his differences and the hardship they have caused him, there is much he can and even should do on his own.

The book was an enjoyable and easy read that seemed very realistic.  I like to think that my elementary and junior high classmates would not have voted me most likely to shoot up the school, but I was also at the butt end of a lot of jokes and usually picked near the end when it came time to make teams on the playground.  That’s not to say I was friendless, though, and so much of the storyline seemed very realistic to me, based on what I saw and what I experienced during my early school years.  I thought the lessons learned by the hero, his family, his friends, and maybe even his enemies, were positive ones that were general, universal values that people of all persuasions could get behind.  The kids, who were cast as fifth-graders, seemed a little mature for their supposed years, and I thought that distracted slightly from the overall reading experience, as did the sadly standard profane language (this might just be me, but I have a lot less of a problem with vulgar language than with profane language, which is an automatic downer every time).  Overall, the book presented a good message and had some fun along the way, and has been enjoyed by friends and family of all different ages, so there’s a wide appeal.

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The Princess Bride

Once, when I was about 9 or 10 years old, I slept over at the house of a friend from school.  I still remember his name: Robert Durr.  We weren’t really close friends, so I’m not sure how the sleepover got set up, but it did.  There were two main things we did that night.  One was go to the house of some people in the neighborhood whose kids essentially ran a business out of their house selling candy.  We each bought a couple dollars’ worth of candy.  We’d devoured most of it by the time we got back to Robert’s house.  The second was to watch the Princess Bride.  That was the first time I’d ever seen that movie.  I wasn’t sure what to think about it at first, but it turned out to be pretty cool, I thought.  There were sword fights, giants, swamps, and castles.  It was great stuff for a young boy.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman (ISBN: 978-0-15-101544-3), now in a 30th anniversary edition, is the book form of the famous movie.  I wasn’t even aware that there was a book until a few years ago.  As I tend to be a books-are-better-than-movies person, it immediately went on my list when I heard about it.  If one has seen the movie, one has read the book.  There are very few differences.  I think the only difference is that in the movie the grandpa interrupts the story sometimes, but in the book, it’s the author doing that.  In fact, Goldman has concocted an entire alternate persona for himself that is part of the introduction, the main story, and even some end matter.  The story, of course, follows the hero after his return to the kingdom where the farm girl he once served is about to be wed to the evil prince, who has devised a plan to have her killed.  The story follows the death-defying adventures of Westley as he pursues Buttercup (the names are somewhat ridiculous, but there’s a definite element of humor to the book) and dispatches a few villains on the way.  Ultimately, he reaches his prize and defeats the evil, yet ultimately cowardly, prince in an anti-climactic scene where he successfully bluffs that he could get up and fight the prince in a duel, but, in reality, is mostly dead (to quote another famous movie), having recently been brought back to life.

While a fun and easy read, it really wasn’t as good as I had hoped.  As I indicated above, the movie followed the book quite faithfully, so there wasn’t much new material or deeper character development or any of the things you typically get from books.  Where there was, such as with Inigo Montoya, I’m not convinced it actually added that much.  The 30th anniversary edition that I read had some extra front and end matter that I didn’t find too interesting at all, and it honestly took me a good twenty pages of reading to figure out how it worked with Goldman’s interesting literary device of having the narrator be his fictional self.  Once I got that down, though, it was a fun read with a few humorous moments worked in there with the adventures, fighting, and an acceptable level of romance.  Although I’m not perfect in this regard, I found the swearing (really only present in the narrator’s portions) a little much.  Finally, it’s worth noting that my enjoyment of the book may have been just a little higher than it might otherwise have been because it reminded me of not just the sleepover with Robert Durr, but of other childhood viewings of the classic movie.  Fans of the movie will probably enjoy the book, but I’m honestly not sure if this was one’s introduction to the story.

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The Possessed

While in college at BYU, I took a Russian literature in translation course.  We read a number of books, most of which I thought were pretty good, a few of which I didn’t much care for.  One that I thought was a good book was Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.  I remembered that book to have dark, brooding, often just outright insane characters, yet it was a good read. A while back, one of my aunts was cleaning out some old junk and came across some books she read in college.  Some of them were Russian classics.  I took up her offer to become the owner of these books that cost under $1.00 back when they were published in the 1970s.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s the Possessed (often called Demons in more modern English translations), translated by Andrew MacAndrew, was one of those books.  The book is the story of a provincial town in late tsarist Russia that undergoes a short period of chaos when some sons of the town’s prominent citizens return from abroad, university studies, or time in Russia’s crown-jewel cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.  The young men come back with anarchist, atheist, and nihilist views and what seems like a role in an overarching plan to bring down the established government.  The young men play off the fears of the older members of the town’s citizenry, which aren’t really fears of government or the future, but more about their place in society and other more mundane fears.  Doing this, they wreak havoc messing with romances and balls, get involved with the town’s convicted felons, and even murder someone.  What was probably the saddest part of the novel was how after the murder, the victim’s wife and newborn son died.  All of it was caused by the anarchists working to spread their ideas and being willing to eliminate their opponents if necessary.  After the murder, the anarchists were mostly dealt with by the authorities and things fell back into their routine in the town after a shake-up in the government.  Other than the misery they caused, the atheist anarchists accomplished nothing, and that was probably Dostoyevsky’s point in writing the novel: atheism, anarchism, and nihilism are sure ways to bring about one’s destruction and the destruction of those around us.  He also noted, as another of the novel’s characters died, that a firm belief in God and Jesus Christ was a sure antidote to those negative philosophies.

As predicted, the novel had dark, brooding, misguided, and certifiably insane characters.  It was honestly kind of hard to get through at times.  It’s not the kind of book that you pick up one afternoon and finish later that evening because you just couldn’t put it down.  On the other hand, it’s very well written, and easy to follow the story, if not always the philosophy of some of the characters, which is probably just because the ideas of nihilism and anarchy are such fringe ideas in our current society.  By the end of the book, even with all of the death and destruction that many people consider to be hallmarks of Russian literature, I was a fan.  It showed very clearly the depths to which the philosophies of nihilism, atheism, and anarchism can lead people.  They lead to destruction on a personal and societal level.  They lead to spiritual and physical destruction.  While Dostoyevsky didn’t focus on the Christian message very much, he made the point clearly that to redeem oneself and to redeem the human condition, one must accept God and live by the standards that acceptance demands.  That is a message worth reading any time.

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War and Peace

An extraordinary strength of vitality — the strength

which in that vast space amid the snows maintained

the life of this original, peculiar and unique people.

— Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), War and Peace

My first exposure to War and Peace came as a young boy when I saw a ridiculously fat book sitting on a counter at one of my grandparents’ houses.  I was intrigued enough to crack it open, but the endless pages of small print about Napoleon and the Russians meant absolutely nothing to me.  Still, I was fascinated by the idea that someone would sit down and read a book over 1,000 pages.  After returning from my mission to St. Petersburg, Russia, I ended up deciding to double major while at BYU, and Russian was the major I added.  One of our classes was a survey of Russian literature (in translation).  We read a number of books during the one-semester class (the reading assignments were killer), but I gained a larger appreciation for some of the Russian classics.  That class probably inspired me, in general, to seek out more classical literature in addition to the history and politics books that I typically enjoy.  At some point, I knew I’d tackle that ridiculously fat book from my childhood.

War and Peace (ISBN: 978-0-19-953605-4) by Leo Tolstoy (Louise and Aylmer Maude translation) is arguably what we would call historical fiction today.  The only difference is that it was written soon after the events it depicts and likely had some direct impact of one sort or another on its author.  He definitely paints his version of the events surrounding Napoleon’s campaigns.  There is a lot of Tolstoy’s philosophy woven into the story, but essentially, the story follows a few main characters through their youth and into adulthood as they embark upon their careers and family life.  Tolstoy’s characters are varied and present all kinds of different people with all sorts of different character traits.  The reader also gets to become acquainted with the characters in all kinds of situations, which lets one see the best and the worst of the characters.  There are hundreds of members of the supporting cast, some playing a more important role than others.  With so many people in the book, it’s probably a legitimately arguable point just who the main characters are, but I think it was Pierre and Natasha, the two that one sees from beginning to end in the book.  Natasha, young, beautiful, and fun-loving, is the object of just about every young man’s fancy.  She falls in love, spurns her fiancé for the temporary affection of a married man and known womanizer, later repents of that mistake, but must suffer when, seemingly through chance, her original fiancé, wounded severely in the war, is evacuated from burning Moscow along with her family and dies as they make the trek.  Pierre as a young man is short-sighted, rash, and searching for something more in life than the dissipated life he leads drinking, playing cards, and chasing women.  Throughout the book, one sees him struggle to figure out what life is about.  He tries Masonry, civil service, an ill-advised marriage, and philanthropy.  None of them really do it for him.  When captured by the French while observing the battles near Moscow, he meets a peasant soldier from whom he learns a lot about the meaning of life.  After Napoleon’s retreat, the changed Pierre is re-acquainted with Natasha, and eventually they go on to form a happy family.

Many Russians with whom I have discussed literature have told me that if one enjoys Dostoevsky, one will likely not enjoy Tolstoy.  I had previously found this to be true, as I thought Crime and Punishment was a great book, but found Anna Karenina to be excruciatingly painful to read (it can be summed up like this: some rich woman has an affair and then kills herself).  I, therefore, approached War and Peace with some trepidation, but was pleasantly surprised.  Others may, of course, get something different out of the book, but I found Pierre’s change from a going-nowhere youth to a respectable family man with an overwhelmingly positive attitude on life that rubbed off on others to be a great message, especially since it coincided with him coming to terms with his belief in God.  I was intrigued by the thoroughly pro-Russian view presented by Tolstoy throughout the book, especially as it concerned the war years.  He was quite dismissive of foreign leaders, both civilian and military, although — somewhat surprisingly — the Russian tsar didn’t really escape his scorn, either.  Tolstoy presented the great Russian general Kutuzov as a fallible man and even soft in his old age, but also one who was above the fray, which I found to be a quality worthy of emulation.  Some of Tolstoy’s discussion of fate versus agency was difficult to follow philosophically, and even given a little time to digest it, I’m not one hundred percent sure I completely understand what he was trying to say.  What I got out of it, though, was the part of the book I liked least.  Tolstoy argued that fate or pre-destination determines the way our lives play out.  He claims that we need the illusion of free will or agency to function, but that we really play little to no role in how it all works out in the end.  He argues that in a given moment, it seems like we are making choices, but when you step back from the moment and see the whole timeline laid out before you, it becomes apparent that it was, in reality, impossible to make any different choice.  That is, of course, the exact opposite of what I believe, and what is taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in which agency is central to all that happens to us.  The choices we make have a direct effect on what happens to us as everything has consequences, good or bad.  So, the story was enjoyable, the Russophile viewpoint was interesting, although Tolstoy may dispute that he was presenting that outlook, and the philosophy was difficult and disagreeable.  Overall, War and Peace was a worthy read.

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The Long Walk

In eighth grade at Kaysville Junior High, a rather unpopular teacher named Mr. Rice showed us Escape from Sobibor, a movie that tells the story of an uprising in a German concentration camp.  I remember sleeping through some of it, but I also remember being intrigued by it, having learned much earlier about Anne Frank and the underground activity she and her family were involved in.  Later, I learned about the Soviet prison camps, the Gulag.  As with the story behind the movie I saw in junior high, the idea of escape from a vast system, stereotypically cruel and secure in most people's minds, has always been intriguing.  (To be completely honest, escapes from modern-day prisons are pretty intriguing.)  There is something redeeming and inspiring in hearing of people who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the chance — not necessarily freedom itself — just the chance of freedom.

In The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom (ISBN: 978-1-59921-975-2) by Sławomir Rawicz, one can read about just such an escape and one that combines World War II history, the Gulag, and adventure travel into one.  Billed as a true story, the reader follows Rawicz, a Polish cavalry officer, from Moscow's notorious Lubyanka to the a small outpost of a prison camp in northern Siberia, and then about 4,000 miles south, to India, after his escape.  The escape itself is one of the few truly exciting scenes in the book, as the rest reads much like a travelogue, but it is all adventure after adventure as the small party of fugitives walks through Russia and then the wastelands of Mongolia and China.  They pick up a fellow escapee near Lake Baikal and experience Oriental hospitality over and over again in their travels through the deserts and mountains of western East Asia.  These usually touching, sometimes comical, visits are a major reason the travelers made it to India alive.  As is to be expected, they lose a few of the party along the way to starvation and exhaustion.  In the end, though, their desire to be free is triumphant, as they walk out of the hills and into the arms of a British Indian patrol.

I enjoyed the book, which reads like a novel.  The story was exciting, intriguing, and exhilarating.  It was interesting to read the story of torture at the hands of the Russians, the hardships experienced by the prisoners during the prisoner transfer operation across the vast expanses of Russia, and the way the labor camp was organized.  The escape and the adventures that laid therein were also fun to read about and did give off the sense of the indomitable human spirit.  The only thing that may be a bit of a negative about the book (aside from some mild strong language typical of Englishmen (Rawicz settled in England after the war)) is that it likely doesn't live up to its billing as being a true story.  The epic adventure has gone under the microscope of investigators and researchers a few different times.  Since the author lived in England, the BBC did a bit of research, as well as an American woman who wrote a book about her efforts and her inconclusive results.  The one thing that has been established is that Rawicz likely did not make the trek.  After that, one is left to make one's own conclusions including a number of possibilities ranging from him doing part of it to others completing the year-long hike and from the story being a compilation of others' adventures to it simply being a prisoners' tale that became, thanks to the horrors of war and the Gulag, impressed so strongly in people's minds that they genuinely believed the story was theirs or their acquaintances'.  I am personally partial to the latter two ideas, but think that the book was a great story regardless of veracity and even though I went into my reading of the book knowing about the controversy, and therefore approaching it as fiction, it does cause one to think about freedom, liberty, and the indomitable human spirit.

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The Swiss Family Robinson

As a young boy, I enjoyed watching Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson.  What is maybe kind of weird is that I remember the family singing “O, Christmas Tree” more than any other part of the movie.  Like any true boy, the idea of fighting pirates on a deserted, tropical island easily captured my imagination, as did the concept of actually living in a tree house.  Could it get any better?  With my own children now getting to the point where they appreciate movies above and beyond Disney princesses, I have turned to the great movies of my childhood.  These clean, fun movies beat just about anything the movie studios have to offer us today.  For the economically-minded like myself, buying a DVD for $10.00 online also beats going to the movie theater, where you pay at least that for one ticket alone.  Anyway, I recently got to relive some childhood excitement when we watched the classic Disney movie.  It got me wondering, though, where they got their story from.

The answer is The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss (ISBN: 978-0-14-310499-5), but with all movies, the book was only a starting point, and then the screenwriters went from there.  (It’s worth noting that the original story hasn’t been in print much since its 1812 printing and that most people have read a French translator’s version that abridged the original and then added a new storyline halfway through.)    Then again, it’s only fair to note that it seems Wyss was highly influenced by Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.  The story follows a Swiss pastor and his family (his wife and four boys) as they venture off to the colonies to start a new life.  Their well-equipped ship is wrecked, but somehow all the articles and the ship itself is rather well preserved while all the passengers and crew die except the family.  They make a raft and alight on the island that is to become their home.  The family, through resourcefulness and through an expansive knowledge of the natural sciences, is able to get along rather impressively in their new jungle home.  They’re constantly making trips along the beaches and into the interior of the island in an effort to find out all they can about their new home and to discover new natural resources such as plants and animals they can use to make their life a bit more comfortable and pleasant.  Most trips result in a success of one form or another, and soon the family has a couple places to live, orchards, fields, and an abundant number of livestock and beasts of burden of all various types.  There are some adventures along the way with wild animals, explosives, and the rigors of life under the open skies.  The family’s chance for rescue and a return to society is foiled by rough weather, and they must await another such rare opportunity to come, but such opportunities and the adventures in the meantime are left to the reader to invent for himself.

The story was an interesting one and while overall an enjoyable one, not quite the page turner one would expect having seen the Disney movie.  There are no pirates and no romances to be found in Wyss’s novel.  In fact, he intended it mostly as a tale, cautionary in part, for his own sons.  Therefore, there is a somewhat formal feel to it, and not just because of the old-fashioned language or old-fashioned customs.  Those are, often, to be lamented since modern society does not embrace them, including reverence and gratitude before God, respect for one’s fellow man shown through respectful social interaction, respect for women, and respect for parents.  Like all fiction involving juveniles, the young men and boys of the family seem to be able to do much more and know infinitely more than people of their age really would, but maybe young men of the early 1800s really were just that much more ready to enter the adult world than boys of our times.  I also found it a little less interesting than it could’ve been because success was so forthcoming and because the characters, especially the father, seemed to have unlimited knowledge concerning wildlife, animal husbandry, agriculture, seamanship, and a myriad of other subjects.  Again, I realize the everyday man of the 1800s was more knowledgeable about these than most are today, but it seemed just a little too far fetched in the story.  Still, some dry passages notwithstanding, the book was enjoyable in most parts, is certainly not “children’s literature” as it was originally billed (mature teenagers at the earliest), and probably succeeded in its mission of inspiring the reader to be better since I came away wondering if it wouldn’t be possible to incorporate just a little more knowledge about the natural and mechanical worlds around me into my life.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Back in high school, at the end of a year of AP calculus, the teachers decided the best way to use the legally mandated seat time was by showing us movies.  While this would be a great time to jump off on a tangent regarding the follies of state-run schooling, I will refrain, and I could go off on wasted tax monies, but, that, too, must wait for a different place and time.  One of the movies that many of my classmates were very excited about was called the Count of Monte Cristo.  Not having anywhere near the level of pop-culture exposure as my peers, I didn’t get what all the rage was about and ended up sleeping through most of the movie.  Still, my curiosity was piqued, and I have always wondered what caused such commotion.  Almost twenty years later, I’m still not much for movies, especially if they've been made since about 1980, but I have come to appreciate classic literature much more than AP English could ever have hoped to instill (there's something to be said for reading something of one's own volition and being forced to read something).  A good adventure story makes a book that much more appealing.

The prolific French writer Alexandre Dumas’s epic adventure, The Count of Monte Cristo (ISBN: 0-679-60199-6), tells an intricately woven tale of injustice, revenge, hope, mercy, and even forgiveness.  The first part of the book gives the reader no indications whatsoever of the impending treachery and troubles as one is acquainted with the hero, Edmond Dantès, a dashing, honest, and hard-working sailor about to fulfill a few of his life's dreams.  A jealous neighbor, a competitor for the affections of his love, and colleague who couldn't bear seeing Dantès promoted before himself stop those plans, though, and send the main character's life in a totally different direction.  Prison, though, affords us with our first adventure: sneaking out of prison in another prisoner's body bag.  After that, there are many adventures to be had with Dantès on ships, with smugglers, and finally, in Paris as he exacts revenge on those who put him in prison and deprived him of his father, his beloved, and his desired job.  In Paris, the rich Count of Monte Cristo wows the elites, works his way into their lives, and manages to bring those lives to screeching halts, usually through ignominious deaths.  Although Dantès exacts his revenge, he starts to realize that maybe it's not all about justice, especially as he sees his former girlfriend reduced to a thoroughly depressed and unhappy state.  His shows mercy almost to a fault toward those who were once nice to him, but eventually even to one of his avowed enemies.

The book was an enjoyable read, but toward the end, I mostly felt sad for the main character and wished that the book could have included a stronger redemptive message.  It seems that Dantès's final act of forgiveness and ability to again find love were afterthoughts by Dumas.  They didn't make up for 1,000 pages of a man spending all his time and energy on finding ways to be smarter, stronger, and better prepared than one's avowed enemies so one could more fully destroy them.  Dantès's confusion of God's justice with his desire for revenge was also somewhat distracting from the story.  Finally, while I turned page after page as quickly as possible, and enjoyed the story, I realized that the vast majority of the story took place in the parlors of the Parisian elite.  It was adventure minus swords, guns, ships, armies, and other, more traditional forms of daring.  Still, the intriguing web of characters, storyline that was complex at times, and quick-moving events make for a good read and it is understandable why the Count of Monte Cristo is such a fixture in western culture.  It is also worth noting that as I read the book I found myself thinking a lot of the Princess Bride and figured that the author of that book and (later) screenplay must've been intimately acquainted with the Count of Monte Cristo.  It’s a very long book, but the unabridged version is really the only way to go since it provides the richest character development, deeper understanding of the plot lines, and a more complete picture of the settings, motives, and world views of the characters, all of which makes the reader more easily drawn into the world of the characters — one full of faraway places, exotic people, intigue, crime, high society, petty theft, politics, and human foibles and emotions.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.

We

During my early teen years, I read a bunch of books my parents had laying around.  There was quite a variety since many of the books were the popular fiction of the 1970s or books they had read during high school or college (the marginalia gave away which books were which).  I read everything from First Blood and Shōgun to Watership Down and a collection of Mark Twain short stories.  I don’t know how much I remember from these books, a few of which were probably beyond my years.  Although I could understand the words and the basic plot, the subject matter was sometimes too violent or too sexually graphic for the young teenage mind, and I tend to remember those sequences in the stories instead of the story lines.  Another book that resulted in a similar experience for me was 1984, although I did understand it enough to know that it was a warning against various political ideologies, including communism.

1984 is considered by many to be the epitomy of the dystopian (utopia gone wrong) novel, but it was not the first.  Many years before 1984 was written, Russian author Eugene Zamiatin wrote We (ISBN: 0-525-47039-5).  Zamiatin wrote his book, this edition translated by Gregory Zilboorg, to protest the direction the Bolshevik Party was taking the Soviet Union.  Zamiatin was a Bolshevik, but did not subscribe to the Leninist idea of zero tolerance for dissenting ideas within the party.  In the book, there is one, giant state (called the United State) that controls every single aspect of its citizens’ lives, down to the number of times they chew their state-provided food rations.  The protagonist is one of the elite thanks to his role as the designer of a very advanced spaceship that will soon export the ideas and ways of the United State to some other people (ostensibly on another planet).  He starts a journal since all citizens were encouraged to write something to send on the rocket.  However, he meets another citizen, an attractive female, who introduces him to some concepts he’d never thought of before, such as acting and thinking for oneself.  He is eventually introduced to people outside the walls of the United State, and a plan is hatched to use a test flight of the rocket to get both disaffected citizens of the United State and the people outside the wall to some new place in the world.  The plan doesn’t go off, though, thanks to a spy, and the protagonist is forced to undergo a radical new surgery that removes his ability to imagine and then watches as the woman he loved is tortured.  After the operation, he is again completely loyal to the totalitarian regime.

The book was an interesting read, largely because it seemed so relevant to today.  State control of every aspect of our lives seems to be something we’re slowly moving toward.  I found the food example to be particularly germane with various cities, schools, and other government-run organizations banning particular foods.  One example that seemed to go against modern statist ideas (and this failing to foresee modern statist tendencies was present in 1984, too) was the United State’s desire to control its citizens’ sex lives.  Modern statists preach sexual promiscuity and encourage uncontrolled sexual expression, no matter the consequences.  (On the other hand, population control seeems to be the end goal of both.)  It goes without saying that much that goes on in the schools in America is similar to the schools of the United State.  Thinking for oneself is not encouraged, but parroting revisionist history and other ideas is.  The logic so highly touted by the United State, kids in schools are taught that some ephemeral concept called science is where all trust should be placed.  It is interesting to see how the government in We preached that by eliminating choices, eliminating people’s ability to imagine, and making people more and more the same (i.e., social equality), they would acheive true happiness.  Of course, nothing is farther from the truth, and the characters in We recognized that once they had experienced the ability to think for themselves and make their own decisions.  Liberty, the ability to make a choice, is what allows us to experience true happiness.  It does not intrinsically bring us happiness, but allows us to choose those things that do bring happiness, and we can do that regardless of the ability of poeple around us to make poor decisions.  As Zamiatin realized, we don’t need a state directing our decisions; we need the ability to present and live by our own precepts.  We need liberty.

This work, including all text, photographs, and other original work, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License and is copyrighted © MMXI John Pruess.