What are you currently reading?

[hopefullytrusting]

My last official order from Amazon just came in: One day, everyone will have always been against this by Omar El Akkad



A book I'd recommend for any poc, especially black, to read - just from my skim of it so far (I just got it today from the parcel box).

[AnotherSpin]

[Florestan]

[ritter]

Do report once you've read that, Andrei, if you please.

The more I read about that topic, the more I am convinced the Spanish Civil War was inevitable, and that all parties, without exception, were at fault in that national disaster. The sad thing is that now, the grandchildren of the protagonists are rekindling the same embers...   

[Florestan]

Do report once you've read that, Andrei, if you please.

Will do.

The more I read about that topic, the more I am convinced the Spanish Civil War was inevitable, and that all parties, without exception, were at fault in that national disaster. The sad thing is that now, the grandchildren of the protagonists are rekindling the same embers...   

I agree completely with your assessment.

[Florestan]

Do report once you've read that, Andrei, if you please.

Well, the first thing I can report after reading a few chapters is that the electoral system and practices of Restoration Spain were strikingly similar to those of Romania during roughly the same period (1866-1919), what with the government rotation between Liberals and Conservatives and the King as ultimate and not entirely impartial arbiter. Even the methods for rigging the elections were the same. 

Another remarkable similarity is that the Liberals, despite their name and ideology, were far more authoritarian than the Conservatives (their leader Ion C. Brătianu, a former leader of the 1848 Revolution no less, was nick-named The Vizier and ruled the party and its governments with an iron hand) and when in government treated the freedom of the press particularly cavalierly. The radical left-wing of the party, genuinely liberal and democratic (they campaigned incessantly for universal suffrage and agrarian reform), lead by C. A. Rosetti, a friend of The Vizier and himself a former leader of the 1848 Revolution, was very vocal but never strong enough to prevail.

The only thing absent from Romanian politics was anti-clericalism, because clericalism itself had been historically absent in the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. The very few bishops or metropolitans who ever tried to involve themselves in politics were promptly and abruptly rebuked by various Princes: "Your Holiness, mind the business of the Church, the business of the government is mine alone!" 

[ritter]

Very interesting, @Florestan . Thanks!

[ritter]

Jean Echenoz's Ravel, apart from having been a huge success when it was published almost 20 years ago, was warmly recommended to me by a friend. I bought it last summer in Saint-Jean-de-Luz (just across the mouth of the river Nivelle from Ravel's birth-town Ciboure), but I only now et around to read it. Voyons...

[SimonNZ]

Starting:

[AnotherSpin]

[Florestan]

Do report once you've read that, Andrei, if you please.

Finished it.

I can safely recommend it. It's a fairly balanced presentation of the Spanish political and social life between 1873 and 1936, with detailed information about the main actors: parties, the Army, the Church, the Monarchy, the Republic. The inescapable conclusion is in line with your own assessment: all parties, institutions and organizations, from the Far Left to the Far Right and everything in between, all of them share responsibility for the Civil War. Left and Right Republicans, Socialists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, Communists, CEDA, the Falange, the Carlists, the Monarchists --- for all their differences, each believed more Hispanico, ie, with  (quasi)religious fervour and fanaticism, the same two things: (1) that their own doctrine and way was absolutely correct and moral and that all others were absolutely wrong and wicked, and consequently (2) that their doctrine and way must prevail at all costs. (The only relatively moderates were Lerroux's Radicals --- a misnomer, if ever there was one, they were bourgeois Conservatives --- but they were a weak, ineffectual and utterly corrupt relic of the ancien regime). Given such political and social temper, the question is not why the Civil War happened, but why it didn't start earlier than it did.

Now currently reading this:

[ritter]

Finished it.

I can safely recommend it. It's a fairly balanced presentation of the Spanish political and social life between 1873 and 1936, with detailed information about the main actors: parties, the Army, the Church, the Monarchy, the Republic. The inescapable conclusion is in line with your own assessment: all parties, institutions and organizations, from the Far Left to the Far Right and everything in between, all of them share responsibility for the Civil War. Left and Right Republicans, Socialists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, Communists, CEDA, the Falange, the Carlists, the Monarchists --- for all their differences, each believed more Hispanico, ie, with  (quasi)religious fervour and fanaticism, the same two things: (1) that their own doctrine and way was absolutely correct and moral and that all others were absolutely wrong and wicked, and consequently (2) that their doctrine and way must prevail at all costs. (The only relatively moderates were Lerroux's Radicals --- a misnomer, if ever there was one, they were bourgeois Conservatives --- but they were a weak, ineffectual and utterly corrupt relic of the ancien regime). Given such political and social temper, the question is not why the Civil War happened, but why it didn't start earlier than it did.

Now currently reading this:

Thanks a lot for this, Andrei. I might tackle that book sometime soon.

The case of the Falange is also a very curious one. Apparently, almost everyone that met José Antonio Primo de Rivera fell under his spell. He seems to have been a "seductive thug", for lack of a better term. But, what IMO differentiates the Falange (after José Antonio's and other founders' death and the civil war) from its equivalents elsewhere (it original model was the Fascio) is that Franco effectively dismantled it completely. The "single party" had very little influence in the running of the government and in daily life, and was only a prop (in the theatrical sense of the word) of Franco's authoritarian regime. For one, it was not seen as necessary by people to join the party to prosper either in civil or political life, and I'd say that t was socially almost frowned upon to be a member. That's why I always get angry when people talk of Franco's regime as a "totalitarian" state. It might have been so for a couple of years after the end of the Civil War, but thereafter it was authoritarian at most, and in the last 15 years r so, not even that (if we except political activity, of course).

[Florestan]

The case of the Falange is also a very curious one. Apparently, almost everyone that met José Antonio Primo de Rivera fell under his spell. He seems to have been a "seductive thug", for lack of a better term. But, what IMO differentiates the Falange (after José Antonio's and other founders' death and the civil war) from its equivalents elsewhere (it original model was the Fascio) is that Franco effectively dismantled it completely. The "single party" had very little influence in the running of the government and in daily life, and was only a prop (in the theatrical sense of the word) of Franco's authoritarian regime. For one, it was not seen as necessary by people to join the party to prosper either in civil or political life, and I'd say that t was socially almost frowned upon to be a member.

Brenan makes an interesting observation: the founders of the Falange and its initial membership (the camisas viejas) belonged to the same class of people from which very many of the liberals of Cadiz and the Trienio had been recruited a century earlier, namely the senoritos, especially the Andalusian ones.

The single party of the regime was actually a forced amalgamation of Falangists, Carlists and (mostly apolitical) Catholic traditionalists, groups which actually had little commonalities beside hatred towards, or fear of,  the (revolutionary) Left. It was just a facade and indeed became increasingly irrelevant.

That's why I always get angry when people talk of Franco's regime as a "totalitarian" state. It might have been so for a couple of years after the end of the Civil War, but thereafter it was authoritarian at most, and in the last 15 years r so, not even that (if we except political activity, of course).

In my opinion, based on extensive reading, Franco's regime started as a brutal military dictatorship and became gradually milder and milder, civilian moderate politicians increasingly taking the place of the military. In its late phase it was authoritarian rather than dictatorial. It was never totalitarian and I'm not at all convinced that "fascist" is a correct description of it.

[LKB]

So many serious, weighty tomes being posted here...

Going forward, I'm thinking I'll only mention the " lighter classics " such as, Nipples of Death, Fifty Years in the Pubic Jungle, etc.

[ritter]

Jean Schlumerger: Éveils.



Jean Schlumberger was, along with André Gide and Jacques Copeau, one of the founders of La Nouvelle Revue Française in 1909. This book deals with his childhood memoirs. Schlumberger was born in Alsace, part of Germany at the time, but chose French citizenship and moved to Paris when still young.

His brothers Conrad and Maurice founded the international oil drilling company that bears their family name, and his niece Dominique de Ménil (daughter of Conrad) was the famous art collector who, along with her husband John de Ménil, founded the museum in Houston.