Prepping for A World Undone, Feb 15

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4NtSqZcT_4

I failed to finish The Proud Tower in that other thread I started a while back. Sorry about that; I returned it to library per force, and then got distracted and didn't get it back out again. In that thread we covered the Upper Ten Thousand of Engand, followed by the Anarchists among the poor and some of the educated across Europe.

I may or may not track it down again and add more - it does provide nice background to the world into which this cataclysm entered.

Meanwhile, who's in?

I've also got hold of Forgotten Voices of the Great War and have ordered a book of WW1 poetry to read along with it.

I've never led a group read in this House of Learning. Do help me out if you feel inclined.

(touchstones are down today)

A World Undone
The Proud Tower
Forgotten Voices of the Great War

They all had to be forced with work numbers.

Robert

In!

Inn.

I will get the book ordered pronto!

In for sure.

(but I cannot get this book, so I am going to be reading Keegan's The First World War and The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry.

the first poem in that anthology is Hardy's Channel Firing, which I think is good to include here, in anticipation of our GREAT READ.

Channel Firing
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No;
It’s gunnery practise out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

“And all nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

“That this is not the judgement-hour
For some of them’s a blessed thing,
For if it were they’d have to scour
Hell’s floor for so much threatening. . . .

“Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need).”

So down we lay again. “I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,”
Said one, ‘than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!”

And many a skeleton shook his head.
“Instead of preaching forty year,”
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

Thomas Hardy 1914

I just got the book for my Kindle so I guess I am in sort of.

I doubt I will be able to lay hands on the book in question, but I will be happy to try and make a contribution.

I'm getting the book from my library, but have a busy month ahead, so I may be in-ish.

I read the intro and the first chapter last night. Thus far it looks as if this book provides a useful antidote to history textbooks--one of my favorite topics about which to gripe. History textbooks focus too much on war rather than on social and cultural issues. Moreover, they focus on war in an unproductive fashion i.e., dry accounts of who was on what fronts, how many divisions were moved here and there--the sort of thing that non-military history buffs often do not process well. We need more. I have already learned quite a lot from this book. I had not realized what a "comedy" of errors and fatal coincidences of the Thomas Hardy kind contributed to the beginning of WWI. Of what were my history teachers thinking?????

I read August, 1914 by Solzhenitsyn a couple of years ago. For anyone interested in the Russian front and what a cock-up it was this is a good read. Keep in mind it's a typical Solzhenitsyn non-fiction fiction novel. But it is very interesting.

I recently read The Guns of August, so this would be the perfect follow-up.

Of WWII vintage but still applicable I think

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand the holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.

--Dylan Thomas

Although I think Meyer would say that the hand that signed the paper did not put an end to murder. Meyer toys in his intro (I don't think this is a spoiler, but stop here if you're worried) with the idea that WWI set in the stage for all the carnage of the 20th and now the 21st century.

Wow, that Hardy poem is AMAZING. Excellent start!

I am thus far in full agreement with urania's spoiler; in fact it was the impression I got from Year 10 modern history at school, which sparked my enduring fascination with WW1. I think it's generally thought that the Allied victory measures on Germany were so punitive and harsh that it was the catalyst for all that came in the resultant century, from Germany's particularly awful Great Depression, through to the unusually fast and vast rise of Hitler, und so weiter...

>10 urania1:, That was what I loved the most about A World Undone, urania - the cultural, social, political, etc interludes.

Time magazine got the man of the century all wrong when they selected Albert Einstein. The man of the century for the 20th century was Gavrilo Princip. We are still living with the consequences of his one act.

Yeah, though it's arguable that WW1 would have happened anyway, though by using a different excuse. We blame the poor man for so much, when all he did was break the camel's back, as it were.

Oooh, I'm looking forward to this read :)

I am ready to start discussing it now. I am so happy I decided to join this group. I had not intended to.

A Diary without Dates an account of the war written and published during the war is a short but excellent book about life in the hospital wards during WWI. I wrote an a review a couple of years back for LT@http://www.librarything.com/work/606703/book/46215663. I have written an updated review that includes a poem and a interesting poster for WWI posted at Club Balzac

I have read the book once but would enjoy participating in the group read. WWI really turned the world upside down and A World Undone is much more than just a military history of the war. Onward Ho!

Happy to have you wildbill. If I recall correctly you have a number of military histories in your library.

I'm getting ahead in the reading. I don't know whether I will have anything to say, but I'll be here.

Robert

>22 Mr.Durick: I'm sure you'll find some Robert-remarks to insert somewhere.

Welcome to you both.

Just joined Le Salon to join in this group read - so I am definitely in.

I haven't done a group read here before. What is the schedule for reading the book?

24,25> Welcome, both of you!

The group read officially begins Feb. 15th, and runs into the middle of March.

I got it from the library and have commenced early because I tend to get bogged down in nonfiction war histories. Wow, it is so interesting. Looking forward to the discussion.

Just two days away ... and counting ...

Le Salon's first ever non-fiction group read led by the incomparable, ChocolatteMuse ...

This is London in 1903. The glaring thing here, only 11 years before the war, is that this is really in many ways still a non mechanical age.

At around the 3:45 mark a troup of soldiers or mounted police trot past and, a surprising sight, a car buzzes past them. At first I had to replay the scene to ensure I hadn't imagined it - it seems so out of place amongst the horse drawn vehicles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-5Ts_i164c&feature=channel

Thanks to Mary (urania1) and her note in #7 I just downloaded this to my Kindle, so I'm in (just in the nick of time it appears).

>28 absurdeist: - Diktateur, you forget Herodotus early last year. Second non fiction read, but a dictator has so much on his mind I forgive you this one.

ChocolatteMuse doesn't really know how to lead a group read, so who knows how this will turn out. It's really up to everyone else.

Here in my part of the world, it's the 15th already (morning), so I'll start the thread some time today, all being well.

Wait, I haven't finished the book yet. I won't know who won for another 100 pages or so.

Robert

I promise I won't give it away, Robert.

31> that's interesting you'd mention that ... I guess I've never considered Herodotus non-fiction because it reads so compellingly well, un-dry, like, well, fiction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIEwKyxr2bU

No time to join you all now. But I also recommend David Jones' In Parenthesis.

Thought I'd throw out another WWI recommendation I read about recently that sounds really good: The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker.

~36 Highly recommended.... along with All Quiet on The Western Front. The latter was a dramatized reading on Radio 7 on the BBC - very interesting.

Edited to add link http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w22jn

Kate Seredy has written 2 ooks about her life as a child on an estate in Hungary just before, then during & after WW1. As a Hungarian, she & her friends & family are ready for a quick victory over the French & English, & then the Russians. During the estate takes in 7 German children as refugees, & 6 captured Russians who work the farm as the master & all the men are off fighting in the army.
These books are classified as children's books, but they give a rare insight to the war from another side. After the war, the survivers who return are bitter & disillusioned. The estate is broken up.

I remember reading those books as a kid. They were great. My grandmother is Hungarian and I always wanted to learn the language.

For WWI, for me there is nothing like Man Without Qualities by Musil, with that added queasy feeling throughout that it has not yet happened.

The Kate Seredy looks particularly interesting, mainly because I've long noticed a dearth of novels set during WW1 that are set at home, not on the battlefield. Rilla of Ingleside (another children's, or YA-for-girls) is the only other one I know of.

While we're recommending WW1 books, there is also, of course, Testament of Youth, which I began but has been left by my bed untouched for a while now, because it's so complainy. I do need to give it a better chance than I have though. Murr says it's a great book, and Murr tends to know these things. :)

Testament of Youth and Man Without Qualities should both totally be on our Salon reads.

I read those Kate Seredy books as well when I was a kid. I wanted to wear the pleated skirts.

There's also Musil's other book, The Confusions of young Torless also set on the eve of war.

And Hermans Broch's The Sleepwalkers. I have read Musil and Broch, but I know I did not do these books justice, especially the Broch. Definitely ones to reread.

Choco, TOY (mmm unfortunate acronym, what?) may not be your cup of tea. I valued it for giving a woman's perspective on the war, those who stayed at home. I also read it a very long time ago, so it might have assumed more shapely proportions in my memory.

>42 MeditationesMartini: yes, I agree. I'd be up for a Musil reread in the salon.

42,44> is it too early to start a "Let's figure out what we'll be reading in the salon in 2012" thread?

Nope. We'll argue for 10 months easily.

Yes, way too early. Not until after Faerie Queene.

See? we're arguing already.

No, we're not.

It's not an argument, it's merely contradiction.

Contradiction is an argument, if sustained for long enough.

Exactly, Anna. No one's paid for an argument.

And SweetMuse, no it's not.

LOL how funny.

ETA: Clearly, my Monty Python experience is sadly lacking. Almost as tragic as my lack of Girl Scout cookies, though I can't blame the former on Australia.

One of my favorite skits.

So how do you guys go about choosing? Books, that is.

We wait for Le Dictateur to tell us, and we all follow.

>55 beelzebubba: we generally either argue or contradict for a long time. And in the end the Dictator compiles a list. And then we argue (or contradict) a bit more.

At least, that's how it appeared to work last year.

Any contradictions?

Sounds like a perfect system to me.

We try to get notice as far in advance and plant seeds so people start thinking about things they want to read, like, say Kazantzakis, which I'm sure Freeque would love. Then, if he doesn't pick what we want, we threaten to rebel. That's how we got Faerie Queene (well, that, and the fact that it has a tranny in it, and Freeque likes Tranny Lit).

Who can resist a good piece of tranny (lit)? Here's a classic:

classic tranny

No, silly devil, not transmissions, transexuals!

Like this new one, I Am J by Cris Beam which I believe just came out today?

45> seems to me, we've strayed from the topic at hand! Thanks a lot!

Any recommendations that incorporate both WWI and transgender/transexual thematic concepts?

I think there's something on that in Kazantzakis' The Patricides.

Well, it really doesn't deal too much with the actual war, although it's considered a "WWI novel," and I don't recall there being any transgender issues, but I was going to suggest Journey to the End of the Night.

>60 beelzebubba:
Brrrah! lol