George Explains His Scapegoats Pick

A small, yet dedicated group of Apes met on February 27 to discuss the book, Scapegoats of the Empire by Lt. George Witton. This book selection, perhaps the first primary historical source in Apes history, was not billed as a piece of literary art. Those that read it hoping for literary style were sadly disappointed. No, it was one man’s account of a series of historical events that left him embroiled in controversy and facing a life sentence for murder. As with most historical accounts, the point of view of the author and his agenda is part of the read.

Most of the Apes knew very little about the Boer Wars is South Africa. Fought between the British Empire (Witton was an Australian) and the Dutch settlers (Boers) in the late 19^th century, it was one of the first modern guerilla wars with attacks against civilians being one of the tactics used by the Empire. In fact perhaps the first use of concentration camps occurred during the War. Witton’s unit, The Bushveldt Carbineers, was organized as an all-volunteer, irregular regiment, designed to fight civilians. 

The main plot line involves an alleged standing order from the highest levels of the British military (Lord Kitchener, himself) that no Boer prisoners were to be taken. While such alleged order made its way down the chain of command, no British officer would ever admit, under oath or otherwise, that such an order ever existed. Lt. Witton’s commander, Lt. Harry “Breaker” Morant, having received the order from his former commander, the late Captain Hunt, took matters into his own hands and shot Boer prisoners. He, along with others in his unit faced court martial for the deeds admittedly done in revenge for Captain Hunt’s vicious murder.

The outcome of military trial that follows was most definitely prearranged to lead to executions that would placate the Dutch and Germans who the Empire hoped to treat with. Lt. Witton receives a life sentence at hard labor which was later commuted to time served after 3 years. Others including Captain Taylor who was also involved in the order to kill prisoners was acquitted because he had worked on Lord Kitchener’s staff and knew the order was valid (so he said many years later).

Some of the topics that were discussed included:

Guerilla Warfare

• Confusion about the rules of war.
• My Lai Massacre- Capt. Medina orders Lt. Calley to shoot anyone in village because they are all the enemy. Calley gets life sentence and serves 3 years.
• Rules of war condemn shooting civilians and prisoners, yet soldiers risk their lives and careers by not following illegal orders. They are in a no-win situation.

Must soldiers carry out illegal orders? 

• British rules of war would indicate no (pp. 80, 96).
• Do the rules of war change in a guerilla war? Morant thinks so (p. 89).

Is revenge a legitimate war aim?

• Was Morant’s motive mainly revenge? Is this legitimate?

Can we judge past history through the eyes of the present?

Are there mitigating circumstances when soldiers carry out illegal orders or refuse?

• Was Morant suffering from PTSD after Capt. Hunt’s death?
• Should he have gotten clarification about the orders or was he only acting for revenge?

Are military tribunals justified?

• Court recommended mercy and Kitchener overrules.
• Why was Capt. Taylor acquitted? 
• Were Morant, et. al. set up by soldiers at Fort Edward because he disciplined them?
• All defendants tried at once.
• Suppression of witnesses and testimony.
• Secret tribunal was to be open to the public per British military rules.
• Capt. Taylor was Kitchener’s Intelligence Officer and was the one who initiated the orders given to Capt. Hunt. He would have knowledge about Kitchener’s orders. Presumably a deal was struck to let him off. Later offered to help Morant escape.

Can the state “sacrifice” citizens for a higher aim?

• Kitchener would seem to say so.
• History says yes.

Doc asked if this was an important piece of history. In Britiain the execution was a cause celebre on par with the Dreyfus Affair in France that occurred a few years before. In 2009 an Australian military lawyer submitted a petition to British parliament in 2009 to pardon Morant and it was defeated in 2010. I guess the Brits still think the executions were justified.

Finally, most movies are not as good as the book. In this case the rule is untrue. Go see the film Breaker Morant.

I Miss Hal

I liked the book Clark!

Here are my two cents.

Stoner

I was stunned to see the Apes could reach unanimous agreement on anything, let alone a novel.  A Hailey’s Comet event!  Intrigued, I got a copy and I can see why it received the acclaim; it is as good as anything we have read.  After perusing Clark’s report along with Doc’s and Glenn’s appended comments, I was drawn to think a bit more about Stoner the character and why the book is such a compelling read.  First off, I was  struck by the depth and quality of the writing.  The quotes Glenn lifted from the book are but a sample.  Second, it touched me personally; much of what he says about life at a university rang true.  In my experience, even though intradepartmental  infighting could be quite nasty, it never rose to the acerbity Williams portrays.  Perhaps Economists play nicer than English professors.  As I see it, Lomax and Walker are simply iconic characters who serve as Stoner’s foils.  

Although Williams wished his books be read for the pure joy of it, I couldn’t help myself and had to ask whether Stoner had regrets and whether he was a sympathetic character (in contrast to Doc’s take).    Sympathetic character?  I would argue yes, and no.   It all depends upon where your sympathies lie.  If your benchmark is a person’s ability to artfully and deftly navigate life’s roadblocks, stoner falls short.  Initially, I too saw Stoner as feckless.  Failure to deal with Edith’s coldness and indifference colored him unsympathetic.  But then I realized I was using efficiency and expeditiousness as a yardstick.   Williams created a highly complex character, one who possessed a wide range of qualities.  Stoner was keenly aware of what was happening around him, so much so that it seemed to paralyze him.  I’ll admit that as a young man, he appeared ambivalent and timid.  At times he couldn’t recall what was happening around him (e.g., marriage ceremony) and couldn’t grasp or verbalize what he was feeling.    When asked by Sloane to explain the meaning of the 73rd Sonnet he could only mumble “It means…“.  When deciding whether to enlist to fight in WW1 he vacillated.  For two days he did not meet with his classes and did not speak to anyone he knew.  He stayed in his small room struggling with his decision.  When Masters asks him why he decided not to enlist, his response was simple  “Don’t know.”  and “Everything.”  Such seeming banality can be chalked up to his youth.  No doubt young Stoner is inarticulate, but he is also struggling to put into words, to explain, some deeper emotion.  And I believe that the arc of the book is shaped by his need, maybe even his compulsion, to grapple with some deep seated mysteries.  He thinks so, — “in his maturity he had decided it (romantic love) was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.”  That quote nails it.  Is he a sympathetic character?  Yup.  Is he heroic?  You bet, at least according to my measuring rod.

Some other thoughts about Stoner.  What drove him as much as anything else was his desire to minimize the gulf between people — he and Katherine, he and his students, and even he and Lomax and Edith.  He suffered without complaint.  He found love.  He had integrity. He was forthright, principled, ethical and resolute.  He did no harm.  He reached out.  He reliably witnessed his life unfold. He had integrity.  He eschewed action for contemplation.  He believed that his live was evolving and couldn’t be shaped through the force of will.  I believe that he was more than a Don Quixote (sans Sancho) that Masters painted him to be.  

That then brings me to regret.  Was he regretful?  I don’t think so.  Williams chose to make Stoner a scholar of medieval Latin poets.  on page 41 he has Stoner reading and rereading the texts on death.  “He wondered again at the easy, graceful manner in which the Roman lyricists accepted the fact of death, as if the nothingness they faced were (sic) a tribute to the richness of the years they had enjoyed; and he marveled at the bitterness, the terror. the barely concealed hatred he found in some of the later Christian poets of the Latin tradition when they looked to that death which promised, however vaguely, a rich and ecstatic eternity of life, as if that death and promise were a mockery that soured the days of their living.”  I just don’t see regret as a prominent theme in the book.  Acceptance, yes.  Awareness, yes.  But not regret.  Does the last line of Sonnet 73 help?  “To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”

Cheers from snowy Ketchum!

Hal

Stoner

The faithful met Jan. 23 to talk over our impressions of Stoner by John Williams.  The Apes were nearly universal in our like for the book, Charlie being the one holdout.  A comment from the group was, "Where the heck did this author come from and why have we never heard of him.  This guy can write!"  Williams has been recognized - he won the National Book Award for fiction for Augustus in 1972.  The group opined that the writing in this book was on par with the most beautiful writing we've read.

Another universal reaction to the book was, "Clark liked this book!!??".  I have to admit after reading it the second time and enjoying it again, I was a bit surprised myself.  Generally I'm not up for these more or less depressing, introspective type books.  I'm more of a pirate book kind of guy.  I guess I'm encouraged that after 25 years of Apedom, I'm able to appreciate great writing.  It didn't hurt that it was 275 pages, rather than 600.

Doc's copy of the book included a series of letters between Williams and his publisher.  Apparently the book had many revisions prior to publishing and had a hard time getting published.  One of the Apes noted that it only sold 2000 copies.

Brother Liggett mused, "I wonder if this book only appeals to old farts over 60 like us, looking at the bulk of our lives in the rearview mirror."  Good question.  It seemed like the book would be ideal for teaching in a literature class, with many excellent examples of writing and plenty to talk about.  Glenn handed out a double sided sheet with examples of Williams writing.  For example, Stoner at the end of his life looking at Edith:

REGRET:  Almost without regret he looked at her now; in the soft light of the late afternoon her face seemed young and unlined.  If I had been stronger, he thought; if I could have understood.  And finally, mercilessly, he thought: if I had loved her more.  As if it were a long distance it had to go, his hand moved across the sheet that covered him and touched her hand.

There was quite a bit of thought that Stoner had a passive approach to his life, taking the path of least resistance.  He only stood up for himself twice:  giving the BS'er a D, and teaching his class the way he wanted to teach it at the end.  That said, Stoner did exhibit a strength of character and maintained who he was throughout his life.  I felt that he essentially became Archer Sloane, his old mentor.

One exchange in the book I particularly noted was early in the book when Stoner was out drinking beer with Masters and Finch.  Masters basically laid out the character of Finch and Stoner and the university as an institution.  Here's part of Masters' description of Stoner:  "You, too, are cut out for failure; not that you'd fight the world.  Yo'd let it chew you up and spit you out, and you'd lie the wondering what was wrong.  Because you'd always expect the world to be something it wasn't, something it had no wish to be."

Summary:  Great book, great writing, not funny...at all.

Sara's Last Painting

The Apes’ heartfelt discussion at The Forge was wide-ranging and sincere.  This book represents a rarity for the Apes, at least seventy minutes on topic.  We liked it almost universally.  The few flaws could be overlooked. 

The Last Painting of Sara De Vos exists on a variety of levels.  Dominic Smith’s prose takes us on a ride that is both comfortable and astonishing.  I do wonder if the title is better served with a question mark. What is the last painting?

Sara De Vos is a 1600s Dutch landscape painter authorized by The Guild to produce limited works.  We meet Sara as she is in support of her painter husband, Barent.   Sara can prepare materials, ground pigments, research potential vistas for him to paint.  Sara becomes the first Dutch woman approved to paint by the guild.  And paint she must as Barent has left her responsible to the Guild, their daughter dies of the plague. Sara’s struggles are well detailed.

Sara has produced a dark haunting painting of skaters on a frozen river that is in the hands of the de Groot family.  Fast forward to mid-twentieth century and Marty de Groot is the head of the family and this painting, At The Edge of a Wood, hangs above his bed. The painting is replaced by a copy and Marty hires a private detective, Red Hammond, think Sidney Greenstreet as Kaspar Gutman in The Maltese Falcon, to track down the forger.  Marty has lost interest in his work, his coworkers and his wife.  His great interest is art.  When Hammond produces the lead exposing Ellie Shipley as the forger, Marty adopts an alias and through an elaborate ruse strings Ellie along until he fucks her over and abandons her.

Ellie wants to be a curator.  In the 1950s there isn’t much chance of that.  In The Last Painting, Smith exposes Ellie’s search for male approval.  Her dad is a ferry captain.  Ellie adores him.  Ellie’s early art teacher discounts her abilities and ships her off to attend to a couple of old men in an art shop. Ellie is treated as little more that a servant.  When we meet Ellie again, she is all-in to art.  Male characters continue to entice Ellie and she wants to please.  As an Art History PhD candidate, Ellie agrees to produce the copy.  Her specialty in mid-seventeenth century Dutch women landscape painters makes her the ideal candidate to make the forgery.

Forward another 50 years when Ellie and Marty meet again, this time in Australia, each in very different places in their lives. Marty is looking at the end of his life and Ellie has become a respected lecturer and curator.  Her secret forgery is exposed and Ellie’s professional life crumbles.

At a book sellers’ event a publisher representative gushed over this book. She rated it as her top fiction pick of the year.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  What are publisher reps supposed to say?  I smiled, took the book and added it to the others collected that week.  When I got home it went in to the “to be read box” near my bed.  At least a half dozen times I picked it up.  Several other times it went with me as I traveled. The blurb on the cover from Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynne’s Long Halftime Walk, gave me much pause.  I was in a minority that found Lynne’s novel tedious, derivative.  I’m glad I persevered to Smith’s work.

By page 20 I was hooked.  Smith’s description of a 1950s Upper East Side charity fund raising dinner party, with a group of Beats hired as entertainment, was mesmerizing.  Discussion about the Russians, Sputnik and launching a dog into space bridge the Eisenhower era with the space age.  Shortly after the party Marty notices a change in the frame that held the painting and discovers the theft and forgery.

Smith describes a decaying beached whale in Sara’s North Sea village in the same paragraph as he introduces us to the Guild of St. Luke, clever.

Marty has become a solitary figure full of regret in the 50 years since crushing Ellie. Smith’s portrayal of the elder Marty with all the physical limitations and emotional baggage almost makes him seem redeemable, but he really is another in a list of unsympathetic characters. I think Sara is the only character that draws our sympathy.

In the last act the question of the last painting of Sara De Vos revealed, a surprise that Ellie suspected. 

I don’t think Smith would be hired as a Hollywood script doctor.  His dialogue is stilted, awkward. But his descriptive elements are first rate.  

I loved when Helen used X-ray to expose, “white figure trapped below the paint film”, whose eyes are directed at the girl in the painting.  This and the “lead-tin yellow paint” brought the fraud down.

The Last Painting of Sara De Vos ranks high above the mean for me.

Memorable lines:

…Benji? Oh, he’s high as a kite on Benzedrine.  He’ll fuck that fruit bowl if you don’t watch out.”

…You invite the lions to a dinner party and sometimes they bite.”

…”By noon tomorrow, the devil’s bowels will burst out in all this sun and a foul pestilence will cloud the air.  The blubber oil will be sold to the soap works, the teeth used for carved ornaments, the intestinal unguents exported to Paris (Remember Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume?) for musky perfumes.”

…”She’s not good at this game of tact and understatement.”  

 …”Since old world grounds contain gesso, glue, and something edible-honey, milk, cheese-the Golden age has a distinctively sweet or curdled taste.”

…sits unfinished in her apartment, a half-typed sheet of paper mildewing in the mouth of a Remington…she sometimes finds herself staring at the machine’s bullnose profile…thinking: Remington also makes rifles.”

To distract himself from temptation, he (Marty)…”puts on his hat and tugs the brim down so that it lowers and frames his view, removes the ambiguity in the girls’ faces.  The world is bifurcated, exists only from the waist down.” 

“You carry grudges and regrets for decades, tend them like gravesite vigils, then even after you lay them down they linger on the periphery, waiting to ambush you all over again…the past was still alive and throbbing in the veins of the present.”

“His Calvinist grandparents had bundled their terrified faith over from Holland, erected shrines to it that ended up in every high-ceilinged room of the penthouse-the lowland paintings and embroideries were balms against the total depravity of man.  As was money.  The family fortune has been milled from cloth-sailcloth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and treasury-grade rag cloth in the nineteenth and twentieth.  Banking…”

“…he has blood on his hands.”

“He understands he will never forgive himself.”

“…he thinks he’s writing to Rachel, because he’s asking for forgiveness and itemizing his wrong-doings, but…he understands it’s to something or somebody he’s never met-the Russian dog…,or the two unborn children…, or the man he might have become, the trumpeter…”

“I plotted because I was arrogant and stubborn.”

“Of course the past was still alive and throbbing in the veins of the present.”

Respectfully submitted,

Doc

...where we talk Bitter Lemons

Bitter Lemons
Lawrence Durrell



The resident and available Apes gathered at Phil’s new place at Terry Lake. The spot is a great crib. I could certainly feel Phil and Annie in the design character. The Apes met at 6pm. with George, Charlie, Doc, Clark, Ed, Phil and this writer in attendance. Phil had his supreme Beef Bourguignon simmering on the stove. Wonderful on a windy cold evening. “Bitter Lemons” by Lawrence Durrell received mixed review. This writer read the book last winter on the recommendation of a local librarian. I love librarians. The group all agreed that the first portion of the book was a lyrical description on early 50s Cyprus. All enjoyed the “house” project and the local characters. The group split on the history of turmoil for the British Empire. Both Ed and Clark found the history tedious and very different from expectations revealed early in the book. Clark read the opening line from the book and expressed his delight. Later washed away in political turmoil. The  historians, including this writer, were intrigued by the history of Britain’s departure and the Greek/Turk schism. Same shit going on today some 60 years later. Gotta love human behavior. Doc found the book wonderfully written and did not ask ‘What does this book bring to literature?” Most agreed the book falls above the mean in our reading list. A pleasant fraternal gathering. Be Well. ML

John's take on The Water Knife

The Water Knife

by Paolo Bacigalupi 

Chosen by: John Karbula

Overview:

I chose The Water Knife after reading a review of the book in the LA Times Review of Books. (link below)

Given that we are now in year 6 of a very severe drought, it certainly seemed like a timely book and also just sounded interesting to me.

I typically ask of futuristic, dystopian books, “Is the reason for this mess plausible and is the world the writer describes a plausible, realistic world?”  These of course are very basic questions, but they serve as a starting point for me in this fairly common type of fictional conceit.  For instance, in another dystopian/future novel that all of us read, The Dog Stars, the answer to both questions was yes – and it got a lot better from there.

The answer to both questions in The Water Knife is also yes for me – and the results are generally positive but not quite as good as The Dog Stars.

The “New” World

A great strength, indeed, perhaps the strongest point of this book.  It is very, very easily believable that a permanent shift in climate, resulting in essentially permanent drought in the American Southwest could lead to the world created by our author.

This new universe almost serves as a character in the book and a powerful one at that.  Omnipresent in everyone’s life, the lack of water becomes the all-consuming pursuit, the essence of what it means to be alive.  I found all the details of this world totally believable, frightening and terrible to contemplate.  I am thinking of buying land near water in northern Minnesota as a hedge against this future after reading this book!

The high-rise green arcologies are also (for me) completely believable and very strongly realized.  I love the contrast they create with those unlucky millions forced to live on the planet itself while the privileged few enjoy a past planet earth in miniature…great microcosm for the economic inequity that already rules so much of our current society.

The Plot

This is uneven in my view.  I found the “Jack Reacher,” elements not believable.  I would have preferred a story that created the believable characters (below) and let them meet more realistic fates than what befalls them.  For those of you who have watched any of “Game of Thrones,” among the many great elements of the series is that believable, sympathetic characters meet grim and horrible fates. 

I would have found the book more believable if say, for instance, Maria would have had to run the gauntlet of hyena’s in the cage.  (Having her fingers bitten off by them is one of the most realistic and terrifying moments in the book!)

That said, the basic construct of the plot is entirely believable and I love the Machiavellian power struggles for water – the double dealing, the secrets, the unhesitating use of power and fear to rule.  What a great scene the black ops helicopter attack is: exactly what you would expect from our girl Catherine Case.

Characters

This too is a little uneven, but good overall.  Interesting to me is that the women are more fully drawn and less stereotypical than the men. 

Angel Vasquez

The idea that a man like this would and could exist in such a world is very believable.  In his most human moments, Angel is very real to us as a person.  As noted above, when he becomes Jack Reacher, I find him less believable.  A smart, tough, amoral person who becomes more aware of the larger forces in his world through Lucy – this person is someone we can easily imagine existing in this hellish world.

Lucy Monroe

My second favorite character.  She sticks up for her ideals without being maudlin.  Goodness, she is smart.  I just love how her mind works.  We find out how tough she is as well, and for me, her toughness is more realistic and believable overall than that we see in Angel.

Maria Villarosa

My favorite character.  Street smart and brain smart, tough, pragmatic, finding her way in an impossible world – I just loved this character.  She is the most fully human to me, the most believable, the most poignant.  A full and wonderful creation.

Catherine Case

Omnipresent in the book a powerful force we never meet but certainly think we know, this power-master of the water scene is not very lovable, but certainly understands the new world she is in and how to manipulate it to her advantage.  More a force of nature than an actual character, she is nevertheless one of the most fully realized and powerful elements of the book.

Summary

I really enjoyed this book.  Even in some of the more implausible spots, it was a good read.  It fully creates and realizes a frightening future that could so easily come true.  The most powerful scenes in the book for me were the quiet ones: like when the water dispenser gets broken and Maria seizes the moment. 

I was able to set aside some of the elements of the book I was not wild about in the sense that it created a world I could fully enter into and be captivated by – then happily lay down the book and come back to my own real world, where I can go and get a drink of water any time I want!

Respectfully submitted - JK

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-paolo-bacigalupi-20150524-story.html

https://bookpage.com/reviews/18252-paolo-bacigalupi-water-knife#.WAemH-ArKUk

Fitzgerald's Tender

Those who came to The Forge early last night were fortunate enough to be treated by a representative of Grand Rapid's Perrin Brewery.  Several of us sampled a pint of their Blackberry IPA or Perrin Black Ale.  This writer had a Blackberry IPA and while it was a bit too fruity for my simple tastes the price was right.  Haywood was the rep and a nice guy.

We repaired to the back bar for the discussion of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night.  Ed promises to send notes about his choice, so I'll let him speak for himself.  The general discussion was on track for most of the meet.  While several themes were bantered about, the "money doesn't buy happiness" thread occupied much time.

We further observed that Fitzgerald gave us some real gems.  In appealing to the more prurient nature consider this example, "She crossed and recrossed her knees frequently in the manner of tall restless virgins." Who amongst us struggles with that image?  How about, "The orange light through the drawn blind, the sarcophagus of her figure on the bed, the spot of face, the voice searching the vacuity of her illness and finding only remote abstractions."  Can you see Fitzgerald pondering Zelda's schizophrenic behaviors while in treatment and manifesting that helpless feeling he must have had at not being able to care for her?

These and other examples of Fitzgerald's work show him to be one of the best at his craft.

This writer is drawn to the the era that occupies most of Fitzgerald's stories.  Between the two great wars, ex-pats in Europe, especially Paris, produced remarkable works.  The characters there had to have been powerful cohorts.  From Wikipedia The "Lost Generation" was the generation that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway, who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron. This generation included artists and writers who came of age during the war such as F. Scott Fitzgerald,^[1] T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Djuna Barnes, Glenway Wescott, Waldo Peirce, Isadora Duncan, Abraham Walkowitz, Ezra Pound, Alan Seeger, Henry Miller, Aldous Huxley, Malcolm Cowley, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Erich Maria Remarque and the composers Sergei Prokofiev, Paul Hindemith, George Gershwin, and Aaron Copland.

Has there been another such era?

I'll ponder a bit and maybe add some more.  

...meanwhile, Later in 2016...

It's been a couple of hectic months, Gentle Reader, and two titles were discussed by your intrepid heroes, The Great Apes.  In July Flashman and The Mountain of Light was excoriated by yours truly. My goodness, where to begin?  The Flashman series is offered as an everyman British Forrest Gump who places himself at the end of Imperial Britain's tentacles around the globe.  Flashy, yes Flashy as he is affectionately called solves problems and beds conquests.  Great guy, huh?  Early James Bond? Sherlock Holmes?  This iteration of Flashman was copy written in 1990.  MacDonald does his best to imitate adventure writers of the mid-nineteenth century.  I found the structure to be problematic and troublesome.  The cover of my edition features a Washington Post review with Very laugh-out loud funny in quotes.  Flee at that recommendation.  Don't misunderstand, there are a few humorous turns of the phrase.  In the first 100 or so pages, more than 110 characters are introduced.  ONE-HUNDRED TEN.  I counted them.  Probably says a lot about me.  Few of these characters are more than a passing reference.  Why include them Mr. MacDonald?  Are you trying to flex some literary muscle?  Impress us with your historical acumen? Bad form, my friend, bad form.  The Mountain of Light takes us to the North-West Frontier of the Indian Subcontinent in an effort to get readers to appreciate why the brightest gem in the Crown is a ruby of uncommon clarity and size. OK.  Before this my hat was off to the Punjabis for their excellent ale.  One of MacDonald's paragraphs is 180 words long, three semi-colons, 10 commas filled with vernacular.  Oh, and he gives us 56 historical notes and numerable footnotes.  Not for the faint of heart. If you thought the Master and Commander series is your standard bearer, this one is for you.

In August we had a hearty discussion of Elie Wiesel's Night.  He died this year and if you have never read Night, you should.  Much passion, a heavy almost existential discussion explored Wiesel's view of God, religion and how a supreme being could stand by while 7 million humans were exterminated during the Holocaust and other atrocities.  Man's Inhumanity To Man.  A common literary theme. Sigh.