Author: Robert A. Parker

Robert A. Parker, a retired writer and editor, currently writes the blog, A Literary Cavalcade, that offers reviews of 20th and 21st century fiction. His past reviews, written over six decades, have been published in six volumes, also called A Literary Cavalcade. His commentaries on cultural subjects have appeared in America, The Critic, Sign, Communication Arts, Americas, Vuelta, and other publications. He has designed, edited, and written 20 volumes that summarize the Parker family’s literary and photographic careers.

Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell

Rereading. This is an amazing novel, old-fashioned but amazing. Written in 1936, it creates Georgia at the eve of the Civil War, both the estate of Tara and the city of Atlanta. The reader then lives through the war and the post-war Reconstruction as it is experienced by the heroine Scarlett O’Hara. And it creates a lively roster of characters, both Scarlett’s family and the cousins and friends she encounters at both Tara and in Atlanta.

It also creates Scarlett herself, with all her contradictions, with her vanity, her bravado, her stubbornness, her naivete, her self-assurance, her passion for men, and her love for one particular, unattainable man, Ashley Wilkes. What is striking is that the reader understands this woman, with all her shallowness, with all her false bravado, even as she herself would deny those very qualities. Scarlett’s character comes across most obviously when she continually says, “I’ll think of that tomorrow.”

But despite being amazing, this novel is old-fashioned, too. It is carefully structured, shifting back and forth from the drama of Scarlett’s life to a history of both the war and the post-war period. It also reveals too openly the inner thoughts of Scarlet in the form of unspoken dialogue. And it underlines the contradictions in Scarlett more than is necessary. Moreover, the antipathy that grows in Scarlett for Rhett is underscored, even as the reader suspects there is something growing between them.

These are the traits of a novice writer who has not learned the technique needed to make the reader unaware of the book’s author. As a result, she tries too hard to make her intentions clear.

And yet the novel reveals an author of high intelligence, an author who understands how people act and think, whether young or old, male or female, slave or free, rich or poor. An author who understands how details create reality on the page. And an author who is able to turn her considerable research about the Civil War and its times into a vivid world that provide a real backdrop for her characters.

What is also impressive is that the reader relates to a Scarlett who thinks only of herself, who will cut any moral corners in order to achieve what she wants, what she feels she deserves. The reader is fascinated by this woman whom he or she would never want to deal with personally. And the reader is not alienated by those private thoughts that betray her shallowness and her contradictions, a primitive technique that Mitchell uses to reveal the distortions in her thinking.

But whereas Sarlett’s character is carefully presented by the author, Rhett Butler jumps off the page. Perhaps this is because I immediately recalled Clark Gable when he appeared. Given Gable’s vitality, that was a perfect casting.

Rhett is particularly effective whenever he speaks. He is continually challenging Scarlett, continually expressing thoughts that go against the grain. He also admits he is a rogue, whether with women or whether in his illicit pursuit of money, first with blockade running and then with collaborating with the Yankees during Reconstruction.

Indeed, one marvels at the skill of this novelist who, in creating her two romantic characters, has cut across the grain, We sympathize with them; we want them to get together. And yet they are, to a large degree, not admirable characters. They seek the comforts of life, meaning they seek money, and they are beholden to no laws or ethical standards to achieve it. One wonders how much this prompted the novel’s popularity in the 1930s, when readers in that era of privation could identify with these characters who were also the victims of a callous history.

As I delve deeper into this novel, it is not only the research that is so impressive, it is how well Mitchell captures the temperament of the Southern character: what a woman should or should not do, the sense of class within the whites and who is worthy of whom, the relationships between the whites and the Negroes, and the relationships within the Negroes, such as between the house Negroes and the field hands.

Mitchell is particularly effective in how she portrays Scarlett’s lack of understanding of both Ashley and Melanie. That the one she loves does not want her, and the one she does not love so wants to love her.

Mitchell is also here a student of history. This is particularly evident in the second half of the novel, after the war. She captures the intricate atmosphere of the Reconstruction. There are the Scallawags and the loyal Southerners, the Northern occupiers, the free Negroes and the faithful servants, the occupying Northern army, and the wives of all these men—plus the relationships among these various and conflicting elements of society. Even the creation of the Ku Klux Klan is understandable, as loyal Southerners join it in rebellion against the Carpetbaggers and the freed Negroes who assault and swindle them.

There is also a commercial aspect to this novel, perhaps driven by Mitchell’s study of novel writing. And it is that every few chapters there is a significant story development. It is often the result of the return of Rhett, but it may also be the arrival of soldiers, Yankees or defeated Southern soldiers, a new pregnancy, a death, etc. Or a spectacular scene, such as Scarlett’s escape from burning Atlanta. In each case, this new event picks up reader interest, and carries him or her for another 50 pages.

Mitchell is interested, above all, in story. In what will become of Scarlett—in the midst of war, of siege, of poverty, as well as in her relationships with her parents, with Melanie, with the various men she pretends to love, and above all with Rhett, whom she despises on one level and is drawn to on another. Complicating this is her understanding of herself. As she learns to deal with many people around her, she does not understand her own emotions (Melanie) or her own heart (Rhett).

After much movement among the characters toward the end, I was curious about how Mitchell would end her story. Overall, I was satisfied more than dissatisfied. Indeed, the final scene with Melanie is rather moving as Scarlett comes to understand their true relationship. And while the final scenes with Ashley and Rhett lack emotion, they do

effectively conclude her relationships. That is, Scarlett is consistent. She understands her past dealings with both men, and is sorry how both have concluded, but she still blames the men, especially Ashley, for that result.

Thus, Mitchell communicates the true reason for the outcome of those relationships, but shows us that Scarlett still does not understand her own contribution to how they ended. And, perhaps to reinforce this, she has Scarlett again saying she will not think about her future with these men, not until tomorrow. So Scarlett’s character remains consistent, for which Mitchell should be complimented. And our heroine receives her just desserts for how she has handled her relationships with these two men throughout the novel. Note: I see irony at work her more than a desire to punish her for her misdeeds, such as a commercial work might require.

So what is my overall evaluation of this work? I believe Mitchell has written a work of literature. Because its characters are alive on the page, because the texture of the South is brilliantly captured, and because this work addresses the moral issue of how one is to survive when one’s civilization is destroyed, even if it is one’s own doing. But many critics have been turned off by the emphasis on story. Which is why, of course, this work was so popular from the beginning. But for many critics, story belongs to another category, that of commercial fiction. And this work is for them easy prey, because Mitchell’s lack of technical skills leads her to betraying her literary intentions in too obvious a way.

The richness of this novel is reflected in all that I have written here. It was apparently a richness that Mitchell herself could never duplicate. Or perhaps did not want to. It surely required a large chunk of her life to research, think about, and write this novel. She obviously identifies here with the viewpoint of the South, understanding the views of both owners and slaves, as well as the South’s pride in its independence, its culture, and its accomplishments. Nothing else she wrote could further this identification with the South. So, perhaps, she had nothing else to say.

I might even speculate why subsequent continuations of Scarlett’s story by other writers have not worked. The readers of the 1930s no longer exist. Today’s economy is no longer in similar dire straits. And the South is much more a part of the nation today. Moreover, commissioned writers seem not to be able to understand Scarlett and her contradictions as Mitchell did, which is undoubtedly difficult after today’s changes in the role of women in our society. (November, 2013)

The Official Warren Commission Report

As the 50^th anniversary of the assassination approaches, I realize that this series of reviews does not reflect my comments after reading The Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Here is an edited summary of what I wrote back in 1965 while reading the report, and then my conclusions.

I find the chapter on the gunshots to be inconclusive. The point of entry is variously described, especially regarding the possible trajectory and the alignment of Kennedy’s back and throat with Connally’s body. The report also does not analyze the Zapruder film frame by frame, and match up the time Oswald would have taken to fire three shots.

The report does suggest, as Edward Jay Epstein says in his book, that the film’s frames are really picked to make a point, not to refer to all possibilities. Just as the trajectory shown in one frame is fudged in its description, when such a trajectory appears to be impossible, so the tracing of the missed shot (1^st, 2^nd, or 3rd) is also indefinite and unsatisfying. The time between shots is not defined with any precision, either, ranging from 4.8 to in excess of 7.8 seconds.

The report does show that the shots were probably fired from The Texas School Book Depository and that three shots were fired (shells found and witnesses), but it doesn’t explain how the one shot could hit two men, or how two shots could wound two men so quickly in the given time required by that rifle.

The chapter on Oswald is more conclusive. It establishes Oswald as the owner of the rifle found in the Depository. It is not conclusive in proving Oswald fired the actual shots, but it does show how he brought the rifle into the building, and that his actions after the assassination were those of a man guilty of something. Proof that he shot policeman Tippet is stronger, however. And evidence that Oswald shot at General Walker is stronger than I thought.

Regarding the rifle, Oswald did practice working the bolt, which the experts did not, so it is plausible that he fired the shots as the commission describes. Over all, the presented facts indicate that Oswald’s actions both before and after the shooting were those of a guilty man, not those of a victimized person or of a fall-guy.

The chapter on the press is very interesting, as it shows how it took over the Dallas police station, how security was all but impossible for Oswald’s transfer, and how the police cooperated with the press. All was confusion in the basement at the moment of Oswald’s transfer. However, Ruby’s route is not traced exactly, and the question of his being aided is not clear either way.

The chapter on a possible conspiracy offers strong arguments why Oswald was not involved in one. It is primarily based not on any evidence but on Oswald’s character. He did not get along with anyone. He had delusions of grandeur. He was just not the type of person you would ask to join you in any conspiracy. Nor was he the type of person the Soviets would want to use, and if they did they would never have sent him back with a Russian wife. Also people in the embassy felt that he was acting out what he thought and felt, not following a pre-written script.

Oswald’s character suggests he was ready to commit a violent act, without regard to personal consequences, when he felt he was boxed in. Examples are an attempted suicide when the Soviets would not let him stay, the fair-play-for-Cuba activities, and the shooting at General Walker. The suggestion is that his inability to get to Cuba in October is what put him in the mood for the assassination.

Ruby’s activities from November 21 to 24 are covered in the report, and nearly eliminate any opportunity he had to be involved in a conspiracy. His distraught, sentimental state was observed by too many not to be true. And his wanting to be in a big event is also in keeping with his character. Strangely convincing is the suggestion that he shot Oswald so Jacqueline Kennedy would not have to return to Dallas for Oswald’s trial.

The chapter on Oswald’s background says the key to his character was the lack of love he had from his mother, with the result that he retreated from the world, into himself, and there was a compensating build-up of his own vanity when the world paid no attention to him. Life for him was a series of escapes, from his mother, from the U.S., from Russia, from love, from responsibility, from society, and from mediocrity and anonymity.

Oswald’s relationship to his wife is never explored. The report covers what Oswald said and did, not what she said and did, nor how they interacted. And whether or not their getting together in the final week of their estrangement might have changed his plans is not sufficiently explored. Interesting is the commission’s view that the mood in Dallas did not motivate or influence Oswald. But I’m not convinced by its cursory treatment.

The appendices reflect the lack of organization or precise thinking in the report. They are indeed almost as long as the report itself, as they work either to demonstrate why the evidence in the report is accurate, or to show that the investigation was complete.

Yet one does not get a sense of completeness in reading these appendices, especially in the speculation and rumor appendix, where the Commission’s conclusions are stated very arbitrarily.

All in all, these appendices should have been part of the main report. That they were not reflects its poor organization. And this is the result of the staff having to break down the various categories of the crime ahead of time, according to what they think the investigation will reveal, because of the limited time available. The tail thus wagged the dog, the truth; and this lends evidence to Epstein’s point that the Commission reported the subjective truth of what the country needed to know, rather than the objective truth of what really happened.

Conclusion. One comes away with this report feeling that it probably hits close to the truth, that it is perhaps 75% accurate That probably Oswald acted alone, that probably the same shot hit Kennedy and Connelly. That probably Ruby acted alone, and his entry into the police station was unaided.

But this is merely a set of probables. In part, this is because of the Commission itself and the arbitrary way it has presented its facts: that it divides up the book into subject areas, and uses the facts in those areas to draw its conclusion that Oswald was guilty. Its own hedging of its conclusions I interpret to be a result of skilled lawyers playing it safe (in case there are future developments), as much as an admission that one cannot be positively certain from the facts given.

But, after all, one is asked in court only to prove within a reasonable doubt, even when there are many witnesses, as here. So many witnesses, so much news media, so many government officials, in fact, make it inevitable that there are contradictions in various areas, from the number of shots, to the various hospital and autopsy reports, to Ruby’s entry into the police station basement. (The disappearance of the Bible used in the swearing in ceremony on the plane shows the confusion that reigned everywhere.)

With all this, however, the Commission should have done better. It should not have been under the pressure of time. Indeed, the loose ends and lack of follow-up appear to substantiate Epstein’s case. This means that while this is so far the major source of information about the Kennedy assassination, it is not the definitive source it might have been. (January, 1965)

One should also note the Historical Afterward by Bruce Catton that was published with the report. Here are excerpts:

The exact and complete truth about any tragic historic event is impossible to get. We can never know precisely how and why certain things happened. The best we can do, usually, is to work out a rough approximation—to say, somewhere within these boundaries lies a truth that we shall never really see; somehow, out of all of these facts, this result emerged. Even the most painstaking history is a bridge across an eternal mystery….

…In the case of President Kennedy we have the hard facts but we do not quite know what they really mean. How far was Lee Oswald like John Wilkes Booth? Did his haunted mind, like Booth’s, somehow respond to the hatreds and terrors that boiled up all around him?…Was this act part of 1963 in the sense that Booth’s was part of 1865, or was it simply an irrational explosion that might have happened to any President at any time and in any place? The Warren commission could find no trace of a plot that used Oswald as trigger man. It saw no evidence of a conspiracy of either the right or the left. It established that truth, which cuts the ground out from under the myth-makers but which also leaves us confronting a riddle. What did this really mean?

The question will bother us for a long time to come because it involves the intangibles that lie beyond the reach of any commission. We know that John F. Kennedy was President at a time when many diverse hatreds were being aroused, hatreds born of hot war and cold war and the agonizing difficulty of adjusting a complex society to a time of incomprehensible changes; we know that he devoted himself as President to the task of quelling those hatreds and facing the future with hope and without terror; and we know that in the midst of all this he was shot to death. There our knowledge ends. In Lincoln’s case we can see that an era of irrational fury led inescapably to an irrational act of hatred. In Kennedy’s case we do not know.

Perhaps we shall never know….

Updated commentary.

I have long accepted the determination of the Warren Commission, despite the popularity of books which challenged its conclusions. I was once even offered the opportunity to write a contrary work, but I never agreed with that view. I still believe Oswald acted alone, despite the intriguing speculation that behind the crime were such people as Fidel Castro, Joe Kennedy, the Russians, Marina Oswald, Lyndon Johnson, Mafia chieftans, and various sections of the U.S. government.

I have long accepted the single-bullet theory (both Kennedy and Johnson were hit by the same bullet) and the explanation of why Kennedy’s head went backward when shot from behind (meaning there was no second gunman on the grassy knoll). Both these factors were explained, incidentally, in that PBS documentary I have referred to.

More interesting to me are the literary efforts that treat of the assassination. For they enable me to return to a moment I will never forget, a moment that I need to rise above. In their way, they give a meaning to that horrible deed, although they explore a profounder meaning than the one that historian Bruce Catton cited.

These novels range from commercial work to serious work. Four that I have read are:

Winter Kills (1974), by Richard Condon. “This is strictly a commercial work, written with no style and grace. And yet it is enthralling. As the JFK assassination will always be. As the sense of powerlessness in a threatening world always will be for me….[But] there is no probing of ethical, political, psychological issues. And an opportunity to do so is missed, for there could be a conclusion in which the hero, for whatever reason, could not reveal the truth, and this is why America still does not know for sure what happened to JFK.”

Libra (1988), by Don DeLillo. “The strengths of this book emphasize its weaknesses. In this fascinating story of conspiracy, the CIA plots to turn American public opinion against Castro by creating a failed assassination of JFK by the Cubans….This book would have been much more powerful if the character of Oswald as victim had been presented more strongly….Isn’t this where a serious novelist should probe, not just into the details of the conspiracy?”

Flying into Love (1992), by D. M. Thomas. “This is a marvelous, imaginative novel. It is not what I expected it to be, however. For Thomas explores the actions and the thoughts of the actual people who were part of that tragic day….His framework is that the assassination is a conspiracy, not the act of a lone gunmen….The great conceit of this novel, and it is a magnificent one, is its description of a Kennedy visit to Dallas that never happened. For in this version there is no assassination. And this marvelous counterpoint works, for in 1963 many of us could not accept the fact of the assassination. So Thomas creates an alternate world of denial, a world we are comfortable with, the only world, indeed, we wish to accept.”

11/22/63 (2011), by Stephen King. This is another brilliant, and imaginative, novel from King. No critic will dare to call it literature, but I would suggest that this work will survive as long as the Kennedy magic survives. Or perhaps longer. For this novel is King’s salute to Jack Finney’s Time and Again, the classic of time-travel novels….The two books are similar because both heroes travel into the past, both seek to negate an event that occurred in the past, both fall in love with a woman living in that past, and both are tempted to remain in that past.”

If I prefer the King and the Thomas novels. I wonder if it is partly because both explore the possibility of the assassination not happening. That is, such an assumption reflects both an extra step in their imagination, and wishful thinking by all readers who were alive back then. (November, 2013)

The Looming Tower, by Lawrence Wright

Sub-title: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. This 2006 work is a magnificent summary of how one corner of the Moslem world developed its hatred of the West, how it reached expression in the founding of al-Qaeda, and how this culminated with the attack on the Twin Towers. One has to marvel at the revelations here, at the intimate details, including strategic discussions within the leadership of al-Qaeda. How on earth, the reader continually thinks, did Wright uncover such details, such conversations, that take us inside the tents, the caves, and the huts of these men out to destroy the United States?

What I regret not doing here is writing a summary of the events as I read this book. The events are indeed remarkable. The origins of the movement that produced the 9/11 attack were in the streets of Cairo. Then its creators moved to the south into the Sudan, before finding a haven in Afghanistan. Where the Arab bin Laden and the Egyptian Zawahiri joined forces, Zawahiri the strategist and bin Laden the executor of that strategy. Their initial successes were the bombing of two American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and then the exploding of a huge hole in the side of the destroyer USS Cole.

We read the early histories of the movement that developed into al-Qaeda, how Zawahiri began as a 15-year-old in a Cairo underground cell, trained and practiced as a doctor, then joined a movement that led to the assassination of the Egyptian leader Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. Meanwhile, in Arabia, bin Laden’s father, a poor laborer, rose to become one of the richest men in that country. He founded a construction company, and its efficiency pleased the royal family, resulting in work on major buildings as well as on the highways and airports of Arabia. One son, Obama, was a loner, very religious, who worked for the company awhile, and then became alienated from his father, his family, and the direction of his country.

On the American side, Wright details how the CIA and the FBI had separate evidence regarding the suicidal 9/11 flight crews, but never put their information together, each trying to protect its own territory and neither trusting the other. Trust was a special problem with John O’Neill, the counter-terrorism chief of the FBI, who aggravated every one with his single-minded pursuit of the terrorists. He was a philanderer, with many mistresses; but, more important, he was a very effective agent. Wright uses many pages to tell O’Neill’s story, making him a kind of hero, despite his personal issues; or perhaps he is more a symbol of the failure of the American intelligence community. Not that he himself was a failure, but that the entire intelligence team was, especially those at the CIA who held back information that he could have fit together. His fate, for some, verges on tragedy—and certainly is ironic.

This book works because of its narrative drive, and because its various characters are real on the page. The biographies of the leaders on both sides do not interrupt the narration but bring us deeper into the conflict. We understand the views of these terrorists, even as we see the faults in their thinking—the main one being that they do not understand the people of America. They think their attack will disillusion the Americans and as a result their civilization will collapse. Little do they know. Little do they understand people like John O’Neill.

Perhaps rightly, Wright ends his book with only a brief summary of the attack itself and the collapse of the towers. In fact, he spends little effort on all those final weeks—from the training of the terrorist crews to the takeover of the planes to their eventual course. Some might miss this climax of the plot, but undoubtedly it is not here because those calamitous events have been told in other books. Wright’s purpose here is to tell what led up to that day, the people involved, why they did what they did, and the failure of the American intelligence community to detect and stop them.

One suspects that this book will be a major reference for future historians who wished to understand what led up to 9/11. It is all here. The founders of the terrorist movement. The internal struggle between the idealists and those more practical. The flight into Afghanistan when the movement was still weak. The contrasting and conflicting personalities of bin Laden and Zawahiri, before they eventually came together. The painstaking strategy behind the final attack. And, above all, the actual conversations of the main participants, especially bin Laden. Testifying to these details are the six pages of two-column listings of the people Wright interviewed, and the 41 pages of notes that cite the reference for each statement of fact.

This book details, as I said, how much the Moslem terrorists misunderstood how much the American people were committed to their democratic form of government. And how much the Moslems distorted their belief in justice, defending the arbitrary killing of innocent civilians by citing isolated passages in the Koran and ignoring the general tone of the Koran that denied resorting to such violence. These Moslems have created their own image of the world, and acknowledge no one else’s. And unfortunately, one sees on the horizon no possibility of their changing.

As Filkins wrote in the Times, the book ends inconclusively, with Zawahiri vanishing in the hills on his flight into Pakistan, suggesting there is also no end in sight for the West’s pursuit of terrorism. As there is also no end to the dispute between East and West, Islam and Christianity, the rich and the poor, and advanced and the backward civilizations. Or even between the idealistic young Moslems and the more practical older generation, not to mention the growing dispute about the role of women in Arab societies. (The Moor can marry and take a woman for one night, and then divorce her in the morning.)

In sum, this is a brilliant book. It has a strong narrative, believable characters, a significant contrast in world cultures, and heart-rending tension as those two cultures collide. It conveys both the big picture, the clash of cultures, and the intimate details of what the men on each side said and did. It will survive as a true portrait of this moment of world history. (May, 2013)

The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides

This 2011 work is an interesting novel, and extremely well written. But it is too long. Eugenides delves too much into the back history of his main characters, and too much into these characters’ area of study. His narrative approach is interesting, as he advances his triangular story of two male students and one female, but then he often backtracks to explain why they are acting as they are in the basic narrative.

The main character is Madeline Hanna. We meet her in her graduation year at Brown University. She is fascinated by the brilliant student Leonard Bankhead, even after she learns he is a manic depressive and his conduct varies enormously. Meanwhile, the steady Mitchell Grammaticus, another Brown student, has fallen for her but is hesitant to reveal his true feelings.

We spend a long time at Brown, as these three meet and interact, before following them out into the adult world. We also meet Madeline’s parents, Alton and Phyllida, who do not want to see their daughter tied down with a manic depressive. But they do not understand their daughter, and do become unsympathetic characters.

Eugenides makes palpable the years at Brown by having Madeline, an English major, probe deeply into semiotics and deconstruction. She becomes a feminist evaluating the Victorian novelists. One cannot help but think the author is taking advantage of his own education, and I do think he probes more deeply here than is necessary.

We see most of this story through Madeline, and some through Leonard, but there is a significant portion devoted to Mitchell as he travels to Europe and then to India, hoping that Madeline will get Leonard out of her system by the time he returns. In India, he volunteers to serve with Mother Teresa. (Note that Eugenides also volunteered with Mother Teresa.) It is not a successful experience, but expresses the religious yearnings that have long motivated Mitchell’s life.

Madeline, meanwhile, is living with Leonard on Cape Cod, where he has a basic science job in the field of genetics. But the science investigations he is involved with never attain the credibility of Madeline’s English studies.

I also did not sense the atmosphere of the Cape, or of the Boston they visit, but the work did earn some credibility from me when the author has Madeline’s married older sister living in Beverly, where I grew up. But, alas, Madeline never visits there.

This work did not receive the enthusiastic reviews that Middlesex and Virgin Suicides received. And I can understand this, for, as I indicated, it is overwritten. It should have been a shorter work. It bogs down too much in details. But with my own prejudice, I also wonder how much this poor reception was influenced by Mitchell’s (and the author’s) interest in religion. How much did that turn off some reviewers? Did it make Mitchell unworthy of either Madeline, or of their own interest in the outcome of this triangle?

The treatment of Leonard’s problem is also excessive. Eugenides wants the reader to understand Leonard’s problem, but he goes too far in explaining manic depression. But, on the other hand, he turns around the reader’s reaction to this character that Madeline is devoting her life to—unwisely, Mitchell believes, in behalf of the reader. For at the end, we have considerable sympathy for Leonard, based primarily on his awareness of his own condition and its impact on others.

This acknowledgement is the key to the ending. It is an ending which I fully accept, even if for some it might not be a real ending, not one readers expect from a story today. And yet it is a literate ending—a, for me, satisfying ending. Note that it is also an ending that satisfies an author’s ideal goal, for it depends not on the final paragraph, not on the final line, but on the novel’s final word.

The title The Marriage Plot, refers to an English thesis Madeline is writing at Brown. It analyzes the endings of old-fashioned Victorian novels that normally finds the heroine ending up happily married. And, indeed, Madeline’s own life, and this very novel, will also refer to the validity of that kind of ending. Note that when she has this thesis published, she brings it proudly to Mitchell—an acknowledgement that it is he who matches her temperament and her needs most closely.

One does wonder how much of Eugenides himself is written into his character Mitchell. Did he yearn for a fellow student while at Brown? Is some of Mitchell’s shyness and reticence his own? Was this the germ of his story? And did he put all his feelings for that woman into the character of Madeline? It is not impossible. And yet it might also explain why this work is not a complete success. That he was too close to the actual experience, that he did not have the proper distance. All, I grant, to be mere speculation.

It will be interesting to follow Eugenides subsequent work, because he is such a fine writer, a fine stylist. And he knows how to create interesting characters. Each work has been different so far, the one unifying element being the response by his characters to moving from adolescence into adulthood. May we expect an author now in his fifties to change this element? I say this, knowing also that most literary works explore the experience of protagonists who are in their twenties, as he or she discovers love and the burdens of life. (October, 2013)

Raylan, by Elmore Leonard

This 2012 novel is a disappointment. Is it really a novel, in fact? It reads more like three interconnected novellas. In fact, I was not intending to comment on it, but…after all, Elmore Leonard is Elmore Leonard.

This is the latest story about sharp-shooting U.S. Marshall Raylan Givens. The latest three stories. The first is about a nurse who carves out people’s kidneys, and holds the body part for ransom. The second concerns a ruthless female coal mine executive who handles environmental and community complaints. The third is about a Butler student coed who is a wiz at poker, and beats all the boys at their game. The book’s unity sems to stem from the fact that these three subjects of Raylan’s attention are all women. Smart women. And villainous women in the first two cases.

What the work does is explore three different backgrounds in three different stories: the medical industry, the coal mining industry, and poker playing. The coal mining company is the main target of Leonard, as he exposes its indifference to both the environmental impact of coal mining and the negative economic effect of lost jobs. Viewed much more favorably is the poker playing industry, since Raylan is intrigued by the utterly frank and self-confident Jackie Nevada.

Wait, there is also Delroy Lewis, an ex-convict who seeks revenge for being kicked out of a Florida town by Raylan in a previous case. We meet him running a team of three female bank robbers. They have nothing to do with Raylan’s three assignments, except Jackie Nevada is introduced when she is wrongly suspected as one of the three female bank robbers.

Like any Leonard work, this one keeps moving. But it is as if Leonard no longer finds it easy to stretch out his tale with complexities, whether moral complexities or criminal complexities. So he puts three simpler tales together to produce one book. Which is not uncommon—see Graham Greene—for authors getting on in years and finding their imagination failing.

What is particular regretful is that Raylan himself has no depth, and is not alive on these pages. He faces no conflicting motives, no moral issues, no capable rival to challenge either his actions or his thinking. He is simply reacting, going through the motions. He is known to be easy-going, but he is too easy-going here, even with some of the bad people. He has no impact on anyone, until he shoots one person at the end.

Other minor characters pop up for amusing or narrative reasons. They include a black driver, a company yes-man, two bumbling brothers, their old drug baron father, and a millionaire poker fan. Some are killed, and the others flame up and are easily forgotten.

Of course, Leonard may revert to form in his next work and create interesting and complex situations, but right now I would not be willing to bet on it. Even though I wish it would happen, for he has long created interesting people involved in the complex world of criminal activity. (October 2013)

A Rumor of War, by Philip Caputo

This is a brilliant book. From the opening pages of the Prologue, one is aware of this. Caputo opens with the lessons he learned while serving as a lieutenant in Vietnam from 1965 to 1966. He was on the front lines of a war that had no front lines. It was a war of tedium, fatigue, and hard-learned lessons, and he puts us on the ground and shows us how those lessons changed his life.

Wisely, Caputo begins with a portrait of himself and his middle-class upbringing in Illinois. How he became frustrated with life as a teenager, and how, immediately after graduating from college, he enlisted in the Marines. He wanted adventure.

And this memoir is the adventure he came to regret. We go through basic training with him, which was tough. But this toughness is what will enable him to survive the rigors of jungle warfare in Vietnam. On the other hand, he was also naïve, he admits, as were all his buddies, as they were shipped to Okinawa to learn the lessons of past wars, and then were flown to Danang in Vietnam to confront the guerrilla warfare of the future. As a lieutenant in charge of a Marine platoon, he is as unprepared for what he will experience as are the naive, gung-ho soldiers under him.

This is what they are unprepared for: the unrelenting heat, the humidity, the monsoons, the savage mosquitos, the surprise ambushes and firefights, their own artillery booming through sleepless nights, the constant threat of snipers, the rugged jungle trails, the forded streams, the mud, the foxholes layered with water, the rotting boots, diseased feet and legs, the strange language, the disguised Viet Cong, etc. Much less the officers’ demand for dead bodies, their overbearing discipline not appropriate for the front lines, the career officers thinking only of promotion, the soldiers only of self-preservation, the long waits and the tedium between patrols, the exhaustion, the lack of sleep, the Spartan food and living, and on and on.

But most of all, Caputo and his soldiers learned about death. That it is everywhere. That it is unexpected. And they see their young selves as mortal. For they see their buddies suddenly killed by a sniper, a land mine, a booby trap, and for the first time realize how vulnerable they themselves are. How death can and will strike like a whim of fate.

This awareness is, of course, what makes them good soldiers, keeps them on high alert—alert to hidden snipers, alert to each step they take in a mined trail or across a mined field. It also teaches them how much they rely on each other, need each other. It teaches them tenderness toward one another, introduces an intimacy that they did not know existed among men. It bonds them into a team that acts as one living unit, each part protective of the other.

And at the heart of this memoir is Caputo’s acknowledgement that this awareness of death brings out both the good and the evil in each person. Perhaps this awareness is a result of his Catholic upbringing, but he does not cite this. Yet it is a truth that this book illustrates. And he concludes his entire experience with a bold example of how evil overwhelmed even him in a moment of weakness—and how it resulted in his arrest.

It is a fitting climax, for this entire book illustrates how the war changes each soldier who survives. How the “body count” measure of success has turned them all into killers. How the fear of death has them shooting first and evaluating later whether the victim is a civilian or a guerilla. And how it has so dehumanized everyone who is serving there that a massacre, such as under Sergeant Calley, can occur.

As for the book’s narrative, I found the early days in Vietnam, after the troops are settled, to be the weakest part of the book. But these are barely a score or so of pages. Once the troops go out on patrol, once they confront the mysterious villages, the hidden enemy, the torture of the monsoons, the chatter of rifle fire, the call for artillery support, the frightening mine fields—once they do, then the narrative is engrossing. And each patrol, each adventure, is entirely different.

And, yes, in each case, Caputo puts the reader in the middle of the action, helps him experience the mud, the rain, the mosquitos, the exhausting hill trails, the lurking sniper, the tiredness, the sense of being alone in a strange, dangerous, and unknown world. It is so unreal, it often seems like a dream world. And, indeed, it inspires Caputo’s own wild dreams.

As Dunne writes in his review, this work forces the reader to wonder: “How would I have acted? To what lengths would I have gone to survive?” The work also challenges to reader to decide both on the overall morality of the war, and how it was conducted. Was it justified? Will lessons be learned? By individual servicemen? By the U.S government?

And Caputo’s conclusion? ”I don’t think so.” An answer indeed chilling. For those words were written in 1977, long before we failed to learn our lesson, long before our government entered other futile wars, other guerilla wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And yet no one who was in Vietnam at that time can forget the highs and lows of his time spent there. Caputo sums up the ambiguity of his own experience. “Under fire, a man’s powers of life heightened in proportion to the proximity of death, so that he felt an elation as extreme as his dread. His senses quickened, he attained an acuity of consciousness at once pleasurable and excruciating. It was something like the elevated state of awareness induced by drugs.”

In other words, it could be addictive, and he admits that the memory of his year there is what drew Caputo back to Saigon as a journalist in 1975. In his concluding chapter, he describes how he volunteered to cover the collapse of the American effort there.

And who would say it is not similar memories that a generation later has drawn many Americans back to Vietnam. As tourists. To, indeed, a friendly environment. How strange the world works. We lost our first war in history in Vietnam, and now many go back as tourists. We hate that war still, and yet we cannot resist the memories of the land, the people, and our own adventure there.

“[The book] is so honest,” Margaret Manning writes, “it makes the attraction of combat understandable. This is not a simple book. It may even be profound.”

It certainly is.

Here is how Caputo himself sums up the challenge he faced in writing this book. “How to find meaning in such a meaningless conflict? How to make sense out of a succession of random firefights that achieved nothing? And what heroes could be found in a war so murky and savage? Yet the task was necessary. In this book, I tried to give meaning by turning myself into a kind of Everyman, my experiences into a microcosm of the whole. My own journey, from the false light of youthful illusions, through a descent into evil, and then into a slow, uncertain ascent toward a new and truer light of self-knowledge, I hope, reflects our collective journey.”

For me, this book has lived up to its reputation. Interestingly, Caputo himself didn’t expect much of a response, certainly not that it would win awards and become a best-seller. Too much time had passed, he felt, and Vietnam was an unpopular war. But it made his reputation, and presumably is what allowed him to leave journalism for the literary world.

In summary, Caputo has written a classic of war, of modern war, a classic that is anti-war and yet salutes the bravery of the men the author served with. He cites “the angels in our nature” that the war revealed, as men died for each other, and also the devil in us that prompted violence and hate. He explores the changes that this inner conflict produced in each soldier, how the bright faces of those who arrived in Vietnam were turned within months to drawn faces of anger, exhaustion, and frustration.

The reader emerges from this book, from its world, with admiration for every man there, and yet with a conviction that “never again.” And yet with an awareness that such a lesson was not learned. Perhaps, Caputo suggests, because the men who have always made such decisions are never the ones to send their own sons off to war. (October, 2013)

The Round House, by Louise Erdrich

This is an excellent novel, not least because it has a straight through-line, from a horrible rape to the pursuit of the rapist. It certainly deserved the 2012 National Book Award.

And never have I encountered an Erdrich work that moved in such a straight line to its finale. There are few sidetracks, as we follow 13-year-old Joe and his three friends as they seek to learn the identity of the rapist, and then decide on their own kind of justice.

The rape victim is Joe’s mother, and his determination to seek justice grows as he sees her in shock, confining herself to her room, neither eating nor talking. The boys turn detective after learning the crime occurred near the Round House, a site of past Indian ceremonies on their reservation’s border in North Dakota. Since it is not clear which legal authority has jurisdiction over that site, and since the white men’s legal system is not that interested in tracking down a white perpetrator, anyway, Joe grows determined to find the man himself, and administer Indian justice.

But matters are complicated by Joe’s uncertain conscience as he plans his revenge. His father is a judge, and Joe has been trained to respect the law. Moreover, he and his three friends are nominal Catholics, and they have been bred never to resort to evil themselves.

Their investigation is sidetracked at first when the boys begin an amusing Huck Finn type scrutiny of a new local priest—and discover he is a seriously wounded vet who could not rape anyone. Later, their youthful naïveté increases as this priest chases Cappy all over town after Cappy confesses his desecration of the church with his girlfriend.

Cappy, who is more mature and the leader of the group, is Joe’s best friend. The other friends are Zack and Angus, who serve more as loyal followers. Although Joe himself heads their investigation, he still looks up to Cappy. Overall, the four boys exist more as a group, while Cappy and Joe exist as individuals.

The sense of Indian justice is enhanced by a legendary tale told in his sleep by an old Indian, Joe’s grandfather Mooshum. It is about a young boy and his escape from men who see his mother as an evil “wiindigo.” And its telling achieves two effects. First, it enhances the Indian atmosphere. But it also provides an indirect inspiration for Joe’s own pursuit of justice. For in introducing the idea of an Indian evil spirit that can take over one human body, which then devour other humans, it suggests to Joe the justice in killing an evil one to prevent further evil.

Note that after a few weeks, Joe’s mother does recover and seems to return to being normal. But this does not change Joe from seeking retribution. He still wants justice to be done, and is determined to make it happen, mostly because the authorities are not yet willing to do so.

It is the details of the boys’ pursuit that keeps the reader interested. First of all, they are boys, and are continually entertaining themselves. With their bikes, their discussions of Star Wars, their pursuit of food, their skinny dipping, their awareness of sex (exposed to the grandmothers bragging about their men, and to Sonya’s awesome breasts). But they are not afraid to confront their neighbors for news. Indeed, these neighbors come alive, from Joe’s extended family, such as Clarence and Uncle Whitey, to various townspeople. There is Linda, for example, adopted sister of the suspect. We hear her life story, but it is less a diversion than a divulging of the background of the suspect.

This is also a coming of age novel. Joe is first introduced to reality through the vulnerability of his mother. But even more significant is his understanding of the professional limitations of his father, the judge.

That a judge who is an Indian on an Indian reservation in 1988 may deal with petty crimes, drunkenness or stealing, but his hands are tied when dealing with major crimes, especially when they often involve non-Indians.

This realization is what turns Joe toward administering his own justice, but it also makes him aware of his conscience—and a realization that actions have consequences, that he is no longer living in a kid’s world, that there are others more powerful whom he must deal with. And, finally, he learns at the end that he must live with guilt, with the knowledge of the justice he is responsible for.

The texture of this novel is enriched by three separate value systems. There is the Indian set of values, represented by Mooshum’s tale of the Indians’ belief in evil wiindigoos that devour people, and the right to kill them. There are the Catholic values, based on one’s individual conscience, and, according to the priest, a belief that good can come out of every act of evil. Finally, there are the conflicting set of political values when an Indian commits a crime versus when a white man commits a crime, and whether in Indian territory or in white man’s territory.

To sum up, this is one of Erdich’s most enjoyable novels, precisely because it is told in a straight line from a single viewpoint. And yet it encompasses a crime story, a coming of age story, a political justice story, and an exploration of morality and one’s conscience. It is a deceptively complex work, but one that is held together by Joe’s more mature recollection of the past, when he has become a judge himself.

One wonders why Erdrich used such a different approach from her previous work. Probably because it is centered on one catastrophic event. But perhaps she will now be aware that complexity does not depend on multiple narratives. The issue may then become whether or not her future works will be built around multiple events or a single event. To work, the former requires more social awareness; while the latter requires, as here, a deeper analysis of the inner life. (October, 2013)

The Tragedy of Arthur, by Arthur Phillips

This 2011 work is a marvelous conceit. It also belongs to the new world of metafiction. It is about Arthur Phillips, a novelist, our novelist, who lives under the spell of his brilliant twin sister Dana and his equally brilliant father Arthur.

The son Arthur, the narrator of this tale, feels that he has to continually prove himself to his own father. This is a father who is constantly absent because he is in jail, sent there as a con man with an ego who time and again has created fraudulent, if almost harmless, plots to fool the public. For example, as a boy, the son had once watched his father create crop circles in order to suggest an alien invader.

This novel is about what may be the father’s greatest con. It is built around the question of whether the Shakespearean play the father has “discovered,” the tragedy of ancient King Arthur, may actually be real, may actually be by Shakespeare. The father gives the play to his son to have it vetted and published. But is it truly by Shakespeare? Arthur has his doubts, even when classical scholars begin to verify its authenticity.

What is Arthur to do? Does he go ahead and support what he senses is a lie? Or does he withdraw his support and risk the trust of his publisher and perhaps his own literary future?

But what makes this novel truly work as literature is less the moral issue that the son faces than his complex relationship with both his father and his sister. The son Arthur is a quiet, insecure man who appears to have no ego. But maybe he does, for he is constantly dueling with his brilliant sister for his father’s attention, as well as seeking his father’s approval. Perhaps knowing his father’s attraction to Shakespeare, the son turns himself into a writer; and this work lists the actual books the real author has written.

There are interesting psychological connections to the relationship between father, daughter, and son. The daughter is continually ingratiating herself with her father, always believing in his love, and now accepting that the Arthurian tragedy was really written by Shakespeare. While son Arthur deeply regrets a dispute over the authenticity of the Arthurian tragedy is coming between him and his sister. This is compounded by more guilt feelings prompted by his failing hopelessly in love with Petra, the lesbian lover of his sister. This is a sub story that is not convincing, however, and really goes nowhere.

But most of all, the son, who since his boyhood has sought the love of his distant farther, and has long resisted the belief that his father loves him, now is persuaded that his father may have given him the manuscript of Arthur in order to demonstrate his love of his son. For the father has now given up all monetary rights to the manuscript, and has left his son a legacy that will make him and his mother and sister rich for the rest of their lives. Which, of course, troubles the son. How can he reap the benefits of what he believes is a fraud?

The novel that we are reading is the son’s solution to his problem. It is an introduction to the play that offers his evidence of why he believes the text is a fraud, even if he cannot actually prove it. But as a tantalizing aside, the son also comes to realize that by writing novels, he is in one sense no better than his father, for as a novelist he himself is creating a fraud, a fraudulent reality.

This novel itself is actually fun to read after its slow start in which the author establishes the family relationships and the father’s fraudulent career. One, in fact, wonders at first where this novel is headed. But once the Shakespearean play appears, first as a 1904 printed work, and than as a 1597 original work, both interest and suspense build. Is the text truly real? Will son Arthur be able to prove it either way? How will his relationships end, with his father, his sister, the lesbian lover? And how will the publisher Random House react to his conviction that the discovered text is a fraud?

The reader is offered brief, but to me unimpressive, samples of the Shakespearean work, as well as emails from the father defending the veracity of the work, and emails from an understanding editor at Random House questioning whether son Arthur really means the manuscript is a fraud. There are also emails and conversations with his sister, betraying his uncertainty, both regarding the manuscript and his relationship with his father.

At the end of 256 pages, the entire novel, is a script of the actual Arthurian play of more than 100 pages. I confess I did not read this. I have never been able to connect with a Shakespearean play by reading it, only by seeing it performed. So after dipping into it and seeing the same problem, the archaic and poetic language that made no conversational sense, I abandoned it. Anyway, I knew it was not real; it was Phillips’ own work. There was no reward in reading it, except to admire the author’s nimble exercise in literary egotism. Yes, it lends authenticity to the novel, and we see what it was all about, but I so enjoyed the novel, I did not need that.

What I admire about Phillips is his literary adventurism. Every novel is completely different. This one is the most daring, for it takes on Shakespeare. No, not takes him on, but rather takes off from him. (September, 2013)

The Girl at the Lion d’Or, by Sebastian Faulks

This 1989 work is a perfect little novel. The reader is drawn into the story of two fine people, and wonders what will happen to them. The novel does nothing else; it simply explores their story and probes their desire for human contact. While they belong to different social levels, their affair is not a metaphor of a clash between those levels. Nor, with one person being married, is there a reference to the morality of their situation. It is simply the story of Anne, the servant girl at the Lion d’Or inn, and Charles Hartmann, a married, more wealthy bar patron at the inn. They meet casually and are slowly drawn to one another. She is alone in a world that has abandoned her, and he is married to a wife he no longer loves. Each seems to provide what the other needs, and they take advantage of a burgeoning friendship to fill the emptiness in their lives.

The reader wonders, given the couple and their situation, how this affair could possibly arrive at a romantic conclusion. One even wonders—remember the perfection—if this could be a modern version of Madame Bovary; that is, whether or not both Anne and Hartmann will survive their affair.

Indeed, it is clear from one late scene that Faulks himself considered the impact of the Flaubert novel. In that scene, one character picks up a knife, and the reader senses that person’s world about to end. What I think this scene is is a young novelist’s salute to Flaubert.

At the end, however, he resorts to neither romanticism nor tragedy, as he resolves with empathy the outcome of this ”impossible” affair.

The background is just substantial enough to highlight the difficulties that their affair represents. It is not the society that each belongs to that is in conflict, but the separate needs of this couple from contrasting backgrounds. That background is the 1930s in a France weakened by the world-wide depression, and a France that looks nervously on the threat from Hitler’s Germany.

In the background is also the terrible toll that World War I took on the manhood of France. And this is made tangible by the story of Anne’s father, who refused an officer’s order for a futile charge of the German lines. Anne has long kept secret her father’s fate, fearing that knowledge of it would create scandal and destroy her own hopes for the future. But as finally she reveals her secret to Hartmann, she becomes more human—and we realize the need she has for human commitment, as well as the need he has for a deep emotional connection to another human being.

Faulks probes just deeply enough in the psychology of Anne and Hartman to make their affair convincing. And despite the “impossibility” of their affair, he does make the resolution effective, as he explores the internal psychology that brought them together and now may or may not separate them. In one case it is the threat of abandonment, and in another it is a matter of conscience.

And whatever the resolution, the reader feels that both have benefitted from their affair. Both have profited from the kind of deep human contact that they had previously denied themselves. And both come to a better understanding of themselves as a result.

And yet the peripheral characters also have substance. We see the inn owner in a different, less dominant light, as well has the inn’s brutal manager in a softer light, at prayer. There is also the incompetent contractor Roussel, and the predator Mattlin who takes advantage of young women. And most of all, there is Hartmann’s wife, the patient Christine, a good but dull woman, who sees she is losing her husband and realizes she can only wait for the outcome. Her strategy is to rely on her husband’s conscience. She becomes a sympathetic character, despite our primary concern for the fate of the two lovers.

Perhaps the simplicity of this work is typical of an early novel, as Faulks focuses on his two main characters, particularly on Anne. Of note is that this is the first of three novels that Faulks set in modern France, three novels built around the emotional lives of three young women of need. The other two works, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, are superior because they are conceived on a grander scale, particularly with their military environment. And their heroines face a far greater challenge than their search for love.

If this had been my first Faulks novel, it would have piqued my interest, but nothing more. Since it was not, it reveals to me the foundation of his later and more powerful work. (August, 2013)

Schindler’s List, by Thomas Keneally

This 1982 work is not a novel, as Keneally claims. It is closer to Mailer’s “history as a novel, the novel as history.” But whatever it is, it is magnificent, even moving as it describes Oskar Schindler life as his World War II heroism ends.

What Schindler did was save about 1,400 Polish Jews from death during World War II. He was a complex man, Keneally reminds us, a Nazi spy originally, later a briber and a blackmailer of both the SS and German industrialists in behalf of the incarcerated Jews, and also a liar and a seducer of women, a man who enjoyed the pleasures of life amid the horror around him, and yet a man who was kind and generous toward helpless Jews, the victims of war.

And for a reason the author cannot pin down, the debonair Schindler converted from being a greedy businessman taking advantage of the Jews to a savior of these persecuted Jews. Was it an ethical residue of a Catholicism he had long abandoned? Was it simply a recognition of the evil, the unfairness of the Nazis regime? Itzhak Stern, one of the men he saved, believes it happened after Stern reminded Schindler of a Talmudic verse: “he who saves the life of one man saves the entire world.”

Schindler worked with the Nazis as the owner of manufacturing firms licensed to operate in labor camps, using conscripted Polish Jews. His base was Krakow, and his labor camp was close to the Auschwitz death camp. In fact, those who were not healthy enough to work for him were sent by the Germans to die at Auschwitz.

The bulk of this work is a series of anecdotes dug up by Keneally’s remarkable research. He interviewed perhaps 50 former prisoners, who told him what had happened to them and to others in two labor camps over a period of about six years. The most evil man they encountered was Amon Goeth, the German in charge of the workers in the Krakow labor camp. He would take out a pistol or a rifle and shoot the Jewish workers for doing nothing, or at most irritating him—which became an enduring image from the great Spielberg film.

Schindler despised the pleasure-loving Goeth, but met his blatant needs and cajoled and bribed him in behalf of the Jewish workers. He also bribed many other influential Nazis with liquor, cigarettes, jewelry, money, and more black market items. But more significant here is the desperation of a dozen or more Jews: their efforts to escape punishment, seek food, obtain medical care, avoid the death camps, etc. In fact, it is these horrible experiences, not Schindler’s, that give weight to this book.

The result is the most complete report of the suffering of the Jews that I have read since Hersey’s The Wall. Which was also based on historic records. And I would put both on the same literary level. It is this narrow focus on a small group of people that produces each book’s powerful rendition of what it was like for the many that were persecuted.

At the same time, the cumulative evidence of such suffering, based on these former prisoners’ reports, underscores the significance of Schindler’s efforts. Schindler himself, however, rarely bragged about what he did. “You are safe with me,” is what he often told his workers.

The greatest example of his subterfuge was moving his entire labor force from Poland to Czechoslovakia as the Russians advanced on Poland and the Germans tried to destroy all evidence of the camps, including the captive Jews. Determined to save those he had been protecting, he first moved the men to Brinnlitz, to an abandoned factory, and weeks later the women endured a harrowing experience before they also arrived. These men and women were the people on Schindler’s list, although it is disputed who actually created that list.

Schindler continually protected his Jews by telling the Germans that he had highly skilled workers who could never be replaced. He also reminded his superiors that the new factory was producing top secret armaments, while in fact the workers deliberately miscalculated exact measurements and never produced anything that could be used. In addition, Schindler himself backed up his commitment to his workers by using his own money to feed, house, and care for them.

As powerful as are the scenes of German cruelty and Jewish suffering that comprise the bulk of this book, the final moments of the Schindlerjuden, Schindler’s Jews, as the Russians approach their camp, and the Germans flee, became unexpectedly moving. Schindler himself pleaded that the prisoners conduct no reprisals. Such as in one case when retreating German motorcyclists approached, but simply to ask for gasoline. The same prisoners even feared to walk out the camp gates. As for Schindler, he rode away in striped prison garb as his disguise, and while the Americans helped his flight to Switzerland, the French were suspicious until his accompanying Jews testified how he has saved them.

As to the question of the “novelization” of this story, this work is a narration; it is not a novel. Keneally relates every event based on the tales of his sources, but while each event concerns Schindler’s Jews, the events are not dramatized; they are reconstructed. And equally arbitrary are the sequence of events. There is no linkage between these events. They are separate. They do not develop reader interest by telling a story. The tales simply enrich the horror of the scene. Keneally also rarely uses quotes, and when he does it is usually without quotation marks around them. Again, reconstruction. Occasionally, however, he will break the narrative to step back and interpret for the reader either certain events or Schindler’s unique motives.

Keneally has used this approach to history before, such as in Gossip from the Forest. He in no way compromises his reputation here. He enhances it (September, 2013)