User Profile

It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis has become very popular as of late. Chronicling the election of a crude, fast-talking populist President of the United States who leads the United States into a fascist dictatorship and the growing resistance of citizens to his rule, the book has become very popular in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as US President. It stands as one of the great American novels of the 1930s and is a brilliant dystopic satire of American society. I want to examine the novel in three aspects: as a work of literature, as an embodiment of its time, and as an exploration into the American character.

From the outset, I would say that I mostly enjoyed reading the book. The satire is biting, and I found myself laughing in many places in the beginning. It has one of the best creations in American literature: Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a corrupt Senator who rises to the presidency through his hatred of foreigners, his crudeness, and his promise of $5,000 to every citizen. He is a master actor and manipulator who uses the press he so violently criticizes, along with the best of modern advertising, to whip the people into a frenzy. The novel focuses on Doremus Jessup, a small-town, Liberal newspaper editor in Vermont. Over the course of the novel, Jessup realizes the role that liberals like him had in allowing the rise of Windrip and that the center of resistance would come from people like him. The author’s decision to center the majority of the action on Jessup’s small town of Fort Belluah is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you can see how Fascism could transform American society at the smallest level. On the other hand, the broader changes in the country, the movement from Point A to Point C, gets lost with this quotidian focus. I would have liked more details about the larger macro changes to American society and the establishment of a Fascist state. By the end, when Windrip is overthrow and his successor is killed in coup, it feels simply like Lewis wants to get them out of the way to get to more interesting matters.

Overall, as a work of literature, I would say that its ideas and passion are excellent but better than the overall writing and characterization. Only a handful of the characters feel like three-dimensional figures. And there are times that the writing feels too on the nose. A possibility for these features is that they were intentional, and that Lewis’ primary point was to get his broader message of liberal complacency and the ease in which Fascism could come to the United States. Another possibility comes from the time in which it was written. Published in 1935, the book was written quite quickly. The Great Depression still was raging and, for all the relief efforts put forward by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the situation had not improved greatly. There were figures like Father Coughlin, a Catholic radio preacher who pushed radical solutions and virulent anti-Semitism to his listeners, and movements like the America First Committee that would eventually take on the trappings of Nazi or Fascist ideology. But the figure that looms large over the novel is that of Huey Long, a senator from Louisiana. Known as “the Kingfish” or “the Dictator of Louisiana,” Long is the direct inspiration for Windrip, from his rough mannerisms to his disdain for the wealthy (and secret collaboration with them), and his promise of “A Chicken in Every Pot” and “Every Man a King.” He planned on challenging Roosevelt for the Presidency on his “Share the Wealth” platform. The best allusion to Long in comes from the middle of the novel, when Lewis writes, “Every man is a king when he has someone to look down upon.” Lewis was terrified of Lewis and wrote this book in response to his potential candidacy, which was ended by Long’s assassination in 1935.

Though the main antagonist Lewis attacked was no longer a threat, the novel’s larger point – that “it” most certainly “could happen here” still resonates. The novel is strongest is in the way in which Lewis shows how Fascism in the United States would come in a different guise than in other countries. It would come through the folksy smile of the snake-oil salesman who can dupe a gullible population. Windrip is an American Fascist dictator who could use the weaknesses, divisions, and proclivities of the American psyche to his advantage. One excellent example is the creation of the Minute Men, a violent militia under the personal command of the President and his followers. Modeled after the SA in Germany, their uniforms are direct copies of those from the US Calvary in the 1870s and 1880s, invoking an earlier, more “wholesome” period of American strength. Lewis shows how the seeds of Fascism and violence are already present in American society. But the more brilliant move on Lewis’ part is to show not only that the takeover would be unique to America but also that it would eventually morph into the violence of every dictatorship, with censorship, concentration camps, and a rapid buildup of the military for future global conquests. Lewis, in so many of his novels, sought to burst the bubble of American exceptionalism and this book is successful in showing the way in which American society could be morphed through violence.I

Anderson's short-story cycle has had a clear influence on the American Short Story and the writing of Hemingway and Faulkner. It is unique in that it sits somewhere between a short-story collection and a novel. It has a loose plot and common characters but it consists of perfectly crafted character studies of individuals in a small, Midwestern town at the turn of the twentieth century. The frame narrative of novel is the maturation of young George Willard, a reporter for the local newspaper, who becomes the confidant of the lonely individuals that wander listlessly through the town. Anderson writes so well and can capture such intense emotions in a few pages. He shows people who feel trapped and lost by a world rapidly changing from agriculture to industry. He captures all of their pains and struggles and creates truly memorable characters. Highly recommended - an author and work that I plan on revisiting later.

"Going Solo" by Roald Dahl is a book that has resonated very deeply with me. A memoir of his time in Africa and the Middle East before during World War II, "Going Solo" show a young Dahl in his early twenties confronting the joys, struggles, and ironies of... growing up during a time of war, all of which he does with his characteristic wit and energy. The narrative is very engaging and one gets a deep sense of Dahl's thoughts and experiences as a young person in the wider world for the first time - forced to "go solo" and come fully into his own by the circumstances of this time. The stories are fascinating and passages well written. Written nearly forty-five years afterwards, the book teams with youthful energy and one finds themselves drawn into his exuberance. The book can be readily divided into two parts. In Part One, Dahl is an employee of Shell Oil in East Africa in 1938. Here he encounters a dying world: the teetering British Empire. It is a world of privilege and danger, with sharply drawn characters and dazzling images to feed the imagination. Part Two explores his time as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force fighting in the Mediterranean Theater during World War II. These section give the reader a less than rosy picture of the war, depicting the dark and often futile fight for Greece and Palestine during the first part of the war. It is here is where his ironic pen can do the most damage - he was one of approximately twelve RAF fighter pilots in all of Greece and forced to take on thousands of German planes and constantly face to face with the possibility of death through the sheer incompetence of the British military effort during these years. This book will give the reader a deeper sense of Dahl's personality and add a new dimension to his more well-known works. The book is a fantastic, enjoyable coming of age story that ends too soon and no review can do fully do it justice. Highly recommended.

"Nixonland" by Rick Perlstein seeks to answer one of the most pressing riddles of modern American history - the origins of the violent and chaotic cultural shifts of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Utilizing the structure of four elections between 1964 and 1972, "Nixonland" explains how the United States went from LBJ's landslide in 1964 to Nixon's landslide in 1972. The argument has three main parts: First, after 1964 there was an illusion of a permanent liberal national consensus shattered by discontent and violence over Civil Rights and Vietnam. Second, Richard Nixon was the most adept at speaking to these anxieties and American's desire for quiet to gain support of the “Silent Majority” to gain support. Third, Nixon not only exploited these tensions but exacerbated them and entrenching the modern narrative of two diametrically opposed Americas.

The book takes a macroscopic-microscopic approach which tries to draw the contours of larger cultural forces through a minute analysis of newspapers, magazines, and contemporary culture. The books main strength is that it convincingly uses Richard Nixon as a vehicle for demonstrating wider cultural shifts in American life. Too often Nixon is only remembered for and marginalized because of Watergate and this book reminds the reader that Nixon's influence has outlived him. Another strength the book shows some of the origins of foundational elements of modern day politics and gives a language and logic to the contemporary culture war.

However, while this book positions itself as the ultimate word on the era, it suffers from a lack of focus - does it really know what it wants to be? (a biography of Nixon? A cultural history? A work of political analysis?) - perhaps the book tries to do far too much. It is an amazing feat for someone to write a book that at once feels like it should have been much longer and much shorter than it is. My biggest criticism of "Nixonland" is that while it gives many of the "hows" and "whats" of the era, it was not so firm on the "whys." This could be more of a personal yearning than an academic one. I would like to be able to diagnose the origin of what is the fatal schizophrenia of American society. Structurally, the first two parts of the book are the strongest and begins to weaken after Nixon becomes president in Parts Three and Four. A recommended read but not necessarily for the casual reader.

After finishing "Watership Down" by Richard Adams, I immediately regretted that I did not read the book as a child. It is quite unlike anything that I have ever read. Adams found a way of making what is on the surface a very simple story which is deeply entertaining and though-provoking at the same time. Like the best children's literature, it can be read on multiple levels and does not shy away from the darker aspects of life and living.

Heavily influenced by Virgil's "Aeneid," the story follows a group of rabbits in rural England who escape from their warren when one has a premonition that their home is about to be destroyed. Adams describes the countryside in beautiful, well-drawn portraits that shows a deep love for the land. But what makes the novel stand out is the creation of a mythical world surrounding the rabbits, from language to culture to religion and legends.

"Watership Down" embodies the essential quality of influential world literature: the ability to create a highly-detailed world that can tell a universal story that resonates across cultures. It is the balancing of the quotidian and the universal that makes truly great literature. "Watership Down" is a beautifully-written novel that deserves its place as one of the 20th centuries best fantasies.

The book feels more like an extended bibliographic essay and I wish that it was longer. However, I the book is a excellent gateway to the basic contours of movements and environmental thinkers in contemporary environmentalism. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 looks at what he terms the First Wave of Environmentalism (19th and early 20th centuries) and its three main movements: back to the land (British), Scientific Conservation (Germany), and Wilderness (United States). Part 2 looks at the Second Wave of Environmentalism from post World War II to the present. The narrative is a bit more haphazard her but the fundamental premise is that after 1945, countries prioritized economic growth over environmental concerns. Guha then shows the various responses to the ensuing pollution and degradation (or, as was the case in many Communist countries during the Cold War, non-responses). The books strengths lay in its simplicity and the way in which it connects thinkers in both the Global North and Global South together, showing the complex global network of thinkers. Most histories of environmentalism focus on events in Europe and North America but by focusing on thinkers in India, Latin America, and Africa, Guha shows how Environmentalism is not simply a fad for developed countries but one deeply rooted in local communities in the developed world as well.

I remember hearing about the book "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson in my fifth grade science class. The story of a women scientist who sounded the warning about the danger of pesticides and chemicals in the environment was told almost like a legend. Indeed, the book itself has had an impact far beyond its content. It ranks as one of the most influential books of the 20th century and one of the few works in human history that can be said to have a direct impact on how we live and understand our world. The books reputation is well-deserved. It is a damning critique of modern society and our over-reliance on technology, chemicals, and poisons to attempt to dominate and control nature. Carson concludes that, like the threat of nuclear war, humanity's use of increasingly deadly forms of toxic chemicals in agriculture put into the power of our own destruction in our hands.

The book works for a variety of reasons. First, the book is lucid in the best tradition of popular science writing, making its points clearly, concisely, and with deep erudition. Second, the book is in the best tradition of ecology, which emphasizes the fundamental interconnected of all life on earth. Third, Carson is a very good writer who writes brilliantly and poetically. The fundamental strength of the book is that Carson balances strong scientific understanding with the ethical and moral component of the subject. She is genuinely angry at the damage wrought to the environment. I would argue that without this balance, the work either becomes a dry academic text or an angry polemical screed.

Finally, Carson always keeps the effect of chemical pollution on human bodies and human activities firmly in her narrative at all points. You can mention the damage done to bird populations and that will make people sad. But mention that these birds are the birds that people like to listen to in the Spring and people will begin to take notice of the direct on their own lives. "Silent Spring" lives up to the adage coined by Upton Sinclair about his novel "The Jungle," which took place among immigrants in Chicago who worked for the meat-packing industry. While his novel was supposed to be focused on the exploitation of workers in the factories, people were more disgusted with reports of rats in sausages and rotten meat. The led Sinclair to remark "I aimed for [readers'] hearts but I hit their stomach's instead." Carson was able to make people understand viscerally the effect that these chemicals have on the world around us, in the food we eat and the water we drink, and residing in our very bodies.

Many things have changed since "Silent Spring" was written. It led to the banning of DDT worldwide. In many ways it kick-started the second environmental movement. But Carson's fundamental charges against man's obsessions with technology, government inaction in the face of industries, and the hubris that we can control our environment, are still just as potent as ever.

According to Ramachandra Guha, there are three primary founders of modern India: Mahatma Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar (the father of the India Constitution), and Rabrindranath Tagore. However, Tagore is often overshadowed by the first two much to the detriment of India and the world as a whole. Tagore was a rare polymath - an accomplished author, playwright, poet (first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature), musician (only person who authored two national anthems), choreographer, and, in his last decade, an accomplished painter. But this little volume of three speeches show Tagore as a shrewd political commentator whose voice deserves to be heard. The three speeches on Nationalism in Japan, Nationalism in the West, and Nationalism in India revolve around his definition of nationalism as an organizing principle that stifles life and the spirit. His analysis, especially about nationalism and violence, are still just as relevant today. I especially recommend this for anyone interesting in politics either in India or the West.

I bought a copy of "The Monk and the Lady" by Pico Iyer about two years ago. I began to read it when a colleague who had lived in Japan for twenty years saw the book. He criticized the book heavily and told me it was not worth my time. He felt that Iyer had exoticism Japan too much and my colleague jokingly declared "And he didn't even get the girl!." I lost interest in the book and set it aside. For some reason, I recently decided to pick it up again and give it a go. After finishing it, I am pretty sure my colleague did not read the book at all. While it is not perfect, I found Iyer's narrative in Kyoto and Japan an wonderful, sensitive work about cultural confusions, spirituality, and the clash between our ideals and reality.

There are couple of different narrative threads in the book that interweave together. Iyer claimed that he always had a fascination for Japan and he wanted to see if the Japan of his imagination matched the reality. He also had the dream to go live in a new city by himself in a sort of globalized Therouvean experiment. He also wanted to explore more about Zen Buddhism. Throughout the book he returns to the metaphor often found in Japanese literature about the Monk and Lady, which can stand for the tug and pull between the spiritual and the secular world. He looks at Japanese literature and Japanese religion. And he describes his encounters with Western expatriates in Japan. You get many of the stock images of Japan that you might come to expect: a strange combination of Eastern and Western, past and future. Strange habits and mannerisms. The perplexity of outsiders trying to make sense of Japan.

One thing I liked about the book is that you get the sense that this might not have been the book he intended to write - if he intended to write a book at all about the experience. While he had planned on living an austere life enmeshing himself in Japanese literature and the spiritual Kyoto, his plans were dashed by his meeting and subsequent affair with Sachiko, a married Japanese mother of two children. Initially I was off-put by their affair and I expected it to be predictable. With her simple English sentences and her "childish" likes and dislikes. They way she seems to embody all of the stock images you might expect to see in any book about Japan. But what makes this book particularly strong is that we discover Japan along with the author. We see him constantly reassessing Sachiko and his own biases and impressions of her and Japan generally.

When we encounter a new place, we often rest of stereotypes or received images of a location. It helps us cope with the sensory overload and foreignness of a new location. And if Iyer had rested on the the surface images, he would have written what would have been an enjoyable if unremarkable book. But Iyer's sensitivity and questioning of his experience lifts it above other travel books. Does Iyer eave Kyoto fully understanding Japan? Not at all. Even though he felt that Kyoto had come to reside deeply inside of him, he would still remain outside of Kyoto and Japan. His experience destroyed many of his illusions but replaced them with new understandings of a place that for which he felt a deep, instinctual infinity.

It is possible that the book is outdated - it was written in 1991 before the economic crash that has continued to cripple Japan. But, according to Paul Theroux, a good travel book is prescient without being predictive and a good travel book should give a sense of the character of a place. While I have not experienced Japan myself, I felt that "The Monk and the Lady" falls into this type of travel book and that I have gotten a good sense of the place.

“The Lost History of Christianity” by Philip Jenkins is a book that has popped up in my historical research quite a bit. It has been cited as one of the most accessible introductions to a whole hidden corner of Christian (and Global) history: the vast Christian community in Asia from the time of the Apostles to the 1300s, when they began to disappear through a mixture of persecution, loss of community space, and climate change. But the book is more interesting than its title suggests and it’s a profoundly insightful examination of a little explored corner of religious studies: how do religions die? And do they die completely.

The book is written for a popular audience and reads quite easily. The book could be roughly divided into three parts. First is establishing the historical record of the presence of Christian communities in whole of Asia. These Churches belonged to what is now known as the Oriental Orthodox Churches, which split from the rest of the Christian world over the Council of Chalcedon (which defined Jesus has having two natures—human and divine). Or perhaps better stated, the book looks at the area where the vast majority of Christians resided and ignores the group of European Christians in Rome and Constantinople that broke away from the Christian majority. So much of this time is spent emphasizing that this as a vast network with a rich tradition that is totally unknown in the West. In fact, this is where I think the book is weakest—he spends so much time trying to emphasize the scope of the community that he does not talk much about their beliefs or what made them distinct. The fact that they existed is enough for him.

The second part of the book looks at the destruction of the communities and shows how they were eventually destroyed through successive waves of invasions from Mongols, the growing vicious crackdown on Christianity by Islam, changing environmental conditions which put more pressure on societies across the world in the late 1200s and 1300s, and European meddling in the Middle East which led many Muslims to associate these Christians communities (which pre-date Islam) with foreign invaders. Jenkins is willing to put forward a balanced account that is willing to say things that may not be acceptable by commentators. On one hand, he argues that we cannot simply say that Islam as violent or inherently oppressive. All religions can be oppressive. All can be oppressed. Islam share a deeply rich connection with Christianity. Muslim rulers were overall willing to allow Christianity to continue to be practiced. But on the other hand, we cannot ignore the fact that many Muslim rulers in the Middle Ages did persecute Christianity and made it more difficult for Christians to practice. There was violence, massacres, genocides, and humiliating restrictions placed on non-Muslims in the Muslim world. This pattern was also seen outside of the Muslim world in places like China and Japan. To ignore either legacy is to try to read contemporary debates into the past and to shape the historical narrative to fit modern sensibilities. This willingness to push both sides of the debate is one of the strengths of Jenkin’s work.

The book is strongest when dealing with the broader existential questions of how religions die and survive. This makes the book useful as a theoretical text on the sociology of religion. His deeper point is to get his audience (which I assume that he assumes are Western Christians - a weakness you often find in books on religion for a popular audience) to understand that nothing is inevitable. While the fortunes of one religion may be in ascendant, in the grand scheme of history it is just as likely for that one religion is to be replaced by another. The virtual disappearance of Christianity from the Middle East is tragic. It is the loss of one of the last remaining links of global Christianity to its roots. The analogy he uses to describe the situation of Christianity today is to say that is as if “Islam was extinguished in Arabia and the Middle East and survived chiefly in Southeast Asia, using scriptures translated in Malay and Bengali” (26). But the work gives the reader an honest exploration of how communities might survive and change in the face of pressures internally and externally. The book is worth reading both for people interested in Christianity but also for people interested in history, religions, and historical change.

I've read this novel twice and there is just something about the vision it gives that haunts me but also give me hope. I like dystopias (to read, of course) and I found that the scenario (humanity suddenly stops being able to have children) uniquely gripping and thought provoking. What would happen when humanity does not think it has a future? While there is the rush of hedonism and violence, the end of humanity in this novel is far more prosaic - gradually aging and becoming more and more self-focused, with deep self-loathing and sadness. My favorite moment in the novel comes from the beginning when the narrator Theo (an Oxford professor of English) witnesses a violent encounter between two women. In this world, many women buy elaborate porcelain dolls and push them around in carriages as if they were living children. Theo sees one such woman walking through Oxford. Another woman comes up to her and coos the "baby" for a few moments. Suddenly, the second woman grabs the doll by the legs and smashes it into pieces. The first woman crumples the ground, sobbing and screaming, as she holds the broken pieces of the doll. The novel is quite different from the film but I like both, even if I like the novel a bit more. James, known more for her mystery novels, was also a devout Anglican and Christianity plays a large role in the novel but in a complex way. I enjoyed the whole experience of this novel so much and I recommend it highly.