Newsflash to the European lady in the room full of Americans, who complained at length about Americans who don't travel, don't speak languages other than English, and don't seem interested in cultures other than their own: The "not to be rude" qualifier was wasted on us, because we still think you're rude. Bonus irony points, considering the setting, which was a lecture on Anne Frank's legacy and the relevance of Holocaust literature in the world today, thus begging the question: "Holocaust--Did that happen THERE or HERE?"
*****
I was sitting in front of this computer on Sunday, thinking at least I’m typing something. At least I opened the file. I seem to have a little time on Sunday afternoons, so that will be writing time. And maybe sometimes I can write for a little while on a weeknight, or on Saturday, though Saturdays are busy.
Right now, I don’t know what to do next with the novel that I've been pounding away at for almost a year. I think that what I’ll do now is take all of the parts that I like best, and then resave them as something else. Another novel maybe, or a story. I feel sure that I shouldn’t give up, so I won’t, but it’s hard to keep going. I guess it’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, as Jimmy Dugan said, then everyone would do it.
*****
I have mentioned before that I hate to abandon a book that I'm reading, even if I've lost interest in it. And surprisingly enough, Rebecca West is the culprit again. I'm reading A Train of Powder, which is, or I thought it was, a first-hand account of the Nuremberg Trials. Actually, only the first chapter covered Nuremberg, and I was all agog as I read that chapter. The part I'm reading now, though, covers a famous murder case of the early 1950s, and the exhaustive forensic detail is causing my eyes to glaze over. I have no interest in true-crime stories, even as told by Rebecca West.
In a far more gripping earlier chapter, about the postwar Allied occupation of Germany and the Berlin Airlift, West sympathizes with the women of Berlin, many of whom were widowed or left behind by husbands who were still missing (or imprisoned in Russia.) She describes the lot of women who are compelled to work all day in an office or a factory; and then to come home to clean, cook, and care for children, as "penal servitude." Absurd hyperbole, I thought for a moment, or the hothouse flower perspective of the upper middle class daughter of intellectuals and artists. Then I thought about it a little more.
The women West was writing about were living and working in a war-ravaged city, with bombed-out streets and buildings, frequent blackouts, limited and erratic water supply, and shortages of everything, including food, clothing, and medicine. They didn't have cars; and buses and trains, when they were running, were dirty and overcrowded. Even walking the often long distances to their workplaces was made hard by bomb-damaged roadways and worn-out shoes. Home wasn't much better. Even under the best of circumstances, cleaning and cooking and caring for children can be hard. If you're trying to cook with practically no food or fuel, however; or you're trying to clean a partially bombed-out hovel without water or cleaning materials, then it's brutally hard.
But who cares, right? They got what they deserved, those Germans. They started a war, causing untold suffering for millions of victims, so why should anyone worry about their suffering? Rebecca West hated Soviet Communism, unlike many other writers and artists at the time, and she was often criticized for having what was perceived as a reactionary outlook. I'm sure that this relatively sympathetic portrayal of postwar Germans didn't earn her any additional fans among the intelligentsia. One part of me thinks that maybe they would have had a point. As I read West's description of the brave and pragmatic German women of Berlin, I wondered why on earth her sympathy didn't seem to extend to the Germans' many victims, including the Soviets, who suffered badly at the hands of the Nazis.
*****
Rebecca West never ceases to surprise me. Just when I thought that I really couldn't stand to read one more word about the corpse of Mr. Setty, and whether or not Mr. Hume had murdered and dismembered him, the chapter opens way up and becomes an examination of life and death and truth and falsehood, and I'm all agog again. Now we're back at Nuremberg. The Germans, apparently, were upset to learn that the Nuremberg defendants would be jailed for the duration of the trial. Their judicial system, pre- and post-Nazi, of course, treated criminal defendants as truly innocent until convicted, which meant that they lived at home and enjoyed total freedom during their trials. More irony. Germans, whose country had just emerged from the most lawless period of its history and all of European history, were now so attached to the rule of law and the rights of the accused, that they seemed more civilized than the Americans and English and French and Russians who sat in judgement.
*****
From Rebecca West, another note to the European lady: Europeans are extremely civilized, except when they're not--exactly like Americans. Exactly like every other group of people, ever.
*****
I have mentioned before that I hate to abandon a book that I'm reading, even if I've lost interest in it. And surprisingly enough, Rebecca West is the culprit again. I'm reading A Train of Powder, which is, or I thought it was, a first-hand account of the Nuremberg Trials. Actually, only the first chapter covered Nuremberg, and I was all agog as I read that chapter. The part I'm reading now, though, covers a famous murder case of the early 1950s, and the exhaustive forensic detail is causing my eyes to glaze over. I have no interest in true-crime stories, even as told by Rebecca West.
In a far more gripping earlier chapter, about the postwar Allied occupation of Germany and the Berlin Airlift, West sympathizes with the women of Berlin, many of whom were widowed or left behind by husbands who were still missing (or imprisoned in Russia.) She describes the lot of women who are compelled to work all day in an office or a factory; and then to come home to clean, cook, and care for children, as "penal servitude." Absurd hyperbole, I thought for a moment, or the hothouse flower perspective of the upper middle class daughter of intellectuals and artists. Then I thought about it a little more.
The women West was writing about were living and working in a war-ravaged city, with bombed-out streets and buildings, frequent blackouts, limited and erratic water supply, and shortages of everything, including food, clothing, and medicine. They didn't have cars; and buses and trains, when they were running, were dirty and overcrowded. Even walking the often long distances to their workplaces was made hard by bomb-damaged roadways and worn-out shoes. Home wasn't much better. Even under the best of circumstances, cleaning and cooking and caring for children can be hard. If you're trying to cook with practically no food or fuel, however; or you're trying to clean a partially bombed-out hovel without water or cleaning materials, then it's brutally hard.
But who cares, right? They got what they deserved, those Germans. They started a war, causing untold suffering for millions of victims, so why should anyone worry about their suffering? Rebecca West hated Soviet Communism, unlike many other writers and artists at the time, and she was often criticized for having what was perceived as a reactionary outlook. I'm sure that this relatively sympathetic portrayal of postwar Germans didn't earn her any additional fans among the intelligentsia. One part of me thinks that maybe they would have had a point. As I read West's description of the brave and pragmatic German women of Berlin, I wondered why on earth her sympathy didn't seem to extend to the Germans' many victims, including the Soviets, who suffered badly at the hands of the Nazis.
*****
Rebecca West never ceases to surprise me. Just when I thought that I really couldn't stand to read one more word about the corpse of Mr. Setty, and whether or not Mr. Hume had murdered and dismembered him, the chapter opens way up and becomes an examination of life and death and truth and falsehood, and I'm all agog again. Now we're back at Nuremberg. The Germans, apparently, were upset to learn that the Nuremberg defendants would be jailed for the duration of the trial. Their judicial system, pre- and post-Nazi, of course, treated criminal defendants as truly innocent until convicted, which meant that they lived at home and enjoyed total freedom during their trials. More irony. Germans, whose country had just emerged from the most lawless period of its history and all of European history, were now so attached to the rule of law and the rights of the accused, that they seemed more civilized than the Americans and English and French and Russians who sat in judgement.
*****
From Rebecca West, another note to the European lady: Europeans are extremely civilized, except when they're not--exactly like Americans. Exactly like every other group of people, ever.
