Vision
During the past few years I tried to read a couple of books by Walter Abish, found them way over my head, and quickly put them aside. I recently noticed his memoir, Double Vision, on one of my shelves and gave it a shot. To my relief, it was not in the least difficult despite the dropping of many names unfamiliar to me and the use of German. His family fled Vienna in the late ‘30’s and, after a couple of stops, settled in Shanghai for nine years. To my surprise, there was a significant German-speaking presence there at the time, and those folks were left pretty much alone by the Japanese conquerors. That span is the most interesting aspect of the book. The most disappointing is the family’s subsequent move to new nation of Israel. There’s not much insight into the peril that country faced in its early days. The final third of the book is a sort of travel narrative. Abish revisited his boyhood home, and several other European spots including Germany. If he was trying to establish a common mindset among Germans, he failed, at least in my opinion. Here’s one of his observations: “Ironically, it was in Germany in the eighties — the last place in the world I expected to be reminded of Israel — that I encountered a similar bluntness and lack of tact. Quite possibly for similar reasons: politeness was servile and cosmopolitan!” The most interesting point in the book occurs in a quote by one of his editors, Gunther Maschke: “The Thousand Year Reich still exists. It’s twelve years of action and 988 years of commentary.” The writing is solid. The hardcover edition is only 220 pages. One reader at Amazon has rated it, giving it four stars. I’ll go with two-and-a-half. Take that with a grain of salt. Abish’s audience is on a higher intellectual plane than I. He has several literary awards and fellowships to his credit. I have none. There are eight books in his canon: three novels, three short story collections, a volume of poetry and the memoir, which was his last work, published in 2004. 88, he is still living.
RIP consummate actor Michael Lonsdale, 89. Born in Paris to a British Army officer and French-Irish mom, his career spanned 1956–2016. There are 241 titles under his name at IMDb. Equally at home in French or English cinema and the big or small screen, he will probably be most remembered as Bond villain Hugo Drax in Moonraker (1979), but he did so much more. He appeared in Day of the Jackal (1973), Chariots of Fire (1981), The Remains of the Day (1993) and Munich (2005). Well done, sir. Thank you.
The next time a leftist complains about money in politics, remember this headline from foxnews.com: “Bloomberg pours $16M into Florida race to pay restitution for former felons to vote.”
From an article at FN: The NFL has issued fines amounting to over $1 million to teams for breaking with the league’s coronavirus protocols after three coaches were spotted without masks on the sidelines. Big brother is watching.
I had to work hard today, lugging crates and boxes back and forth three car lengths, but it was worth it. My thanks to the four kind folks who donated books, and to all those who bought. 75% of the sales were of Russian books. The Frenchman purchased Dostoevky’s Notes From the Underground, Wolf chose Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV by Brian Stelter, and the Quiet Man went home with an illustrated large paperback of selected works by Edgar Allan Poe and The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman.
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