Books and Pamphlets

Sometimes when you buy a box of books you find nothing but garbage. But sometimes a box of books contains retro subversive and lefty literature: Ernest Mandel, Fred Halstead, Peter Camejo, Leon Trotsky, George Novak, and James P. Cannon. It's a nice find.

The Assault

Harry Mulisch wrote The Assault in 1982, but across it's time line, it's largely set in post-WWII Netherlands.   The book's time line is brilliant, flashing backward through the memories of multiple characters piecing together the unseen opening event of the story. But the book is largely dialog, and in keeping the dialog realistic, laid back on the prose in much of the text.

"Everything is forgotten in the end. the shouting dies down, the waves subside, the streets empty, and all is silence once more... With a quick gesture he tosses his straight graying hair, dragging his feet a bit, as if each step raised clouds of ashes, although there are no ashes in sight."

Though there are absolutely glowing sections such as the above...

Bruce Pollock

In the book When Rock Was Young, author Bruce Pollock strings together magazine-type artist biographies into a historical narrative. Rock n' roll history is a well-tread topic but Pollack was among the best writers to cover it. Most of his prose here is pretty straight ahead but he has moments of true grandeur. This is one of them:

"Progenitors of the draft-dodging, pinko, student protestors, the pot-smoking, acid-swallowing, hippies yippies, and the free-love, back-to-nature, love-and-peace, organic, ban-the-bomb, dropout radicals, early folk singers could be found somewhere south of the Top 40 and east of Rock 'n' roll."

R.B. Cunninghame Graham

R.B. Cunninghame Graham was the first MP ever to be suspended from the House of Commons for swearing. He had uttered the word "damn." I use it a lot myself. Be was famous for his the "radical" politics and infamous for his ravels and adventures. He was also a damn fire writer. I recently read Rodeo, a collection of his works. He was a friend of Joseph Conrad, and nearly as good.


I like him best when he is either gothic and morbid or rambling in sociopolitical commentary. His works there reminds me oddly of David Milch.

"Your nine day's wonder is a sort of five-legged calf, or a two-headed nightingale, and of the nature of a calculating boy-a seven month's prodigy, born out of time to his own undoing  and a mere wonderment for gaping dullards who dislocate their jaws in ecstasy of admiration and then start out to seek more idols to adore."

Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia was written by George Orwell and published in 1938. It's difficult to imagine the time. It was in Spain, during it's civil war in the years leading up to WWII. It's a fascinating first-person historical account, but it's also Orwell so it's well written. The best sentence in the book is not about Spain but about England, written to describe it upon Orwell's return home.

"The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth's surface."