about “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914” by Christopher Clark

Why did World War I start? I did not think I cared much about the answer until reading The Sleepwalkers.

It is a big book—over 550 pages—but it is so well written and organized that I read it all, even though my interest in the subject was passing and my appetite for reading in-depth long-form non-fiction on my own time had dwindled. Every page shares colorful details.

The reasons for The Great War go far beyond the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the shrinking Austria-Hungary throne.

The Sleepwalkers is a deep study of the communications and documented thoughts, the sequencing of events and decisions, and the pressures on European statesmen—the kings, prime ministers, diplomats, and generals—as they footed through the years and through their assumptions into one of the deadliest conflicts in history—a war in which about 9 million soldiers died, with 23 million more wounded along with 5 million civilian casualties.

I was interested to learn about the boiling tensions in the Balkans—especially Serbia and the violent streak of nationalism that organized the conspiratorial network, The Black Hand. Serbia was independent, but Slavic populations lived within Hapsburg land, and the plotters imagined the assassination could lead to a united Serbia.

I was also interested to learn about how the colonial interests of the major powers affected their relationships on the continent. In addition to the Balkans, colonial considerations included far east Asia (although Japan was rising as a major regional power), North Africa, South Africa, areas around the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Black seas, and more options opening up with the decline of the Ottoman Empire.

Christopher Clark depicts decision-makers going to war as if it were inevitable, as if narratively driven and somehow unable to imagine the death and destruction that would follow.

The Sleepwalkers impressed the hell out of me—a masterful treatment of a difficult and complex subject. Here are some quotes.

On explaining why Serbian nationalists assassinated Franz Ferdinand:

The archduke made no secret of the fact that he intended to restructure the imperial system after his accession to the throne. The key objective was to break or diminish the Hungarian hegemony in the eastern part of the monarchy. For a time, Franz Ferdinand favoured strengthening the Slavic element in the monarchy by creating a Croat (and, thus, Catholic-) dominated ‘Yugoslavia’ within the empire. It was his association with this idea that so aroused the hatred of his orthodox Serbian enemies. By 1914, however, it appears he had dropped this plan in favour of a far-reaching transformation by which the empire would become a ‘United States of Great Austria,’ comprising fifteen member states, many of which would have Slav majorities. [108, British styling in the book]

On some of the pressures facing the men in charge of Europe:

The press entered into the calculations of policy-makers in many different ways. It was never under their control, and they were never under its control. We should speak rather of reciprocity between public opinion and public life, a process of constant interaction, in which policy-makers sought intermittently to guide public opinion in a congenial direction, but were careful to shield their own autonomy and to protect the integrity of decision-making processes. On the other hand, statesmen continued to view the foreign press as an indicator not just of public opinion but of official views and intentions, and this meant that uncertainties about who was inspiring or licensing which utterances could further complicate communications between states. More fundamental—and more difficult to measure—were shifts in mentality that articulated themselves not in the calls of chauvinists for firmness or confrontation, but in a deep widespread readiness to accept war, conceived as a certainty imposed by the nature of international relations. The weight of this accumulated readiness would manifest itself during the July Crisis of 1914 not in the form of aggressive programmatic statements, but through the eloquent silence of those civilian leaders who, in a better world, might have been expected to point out that a war between great powers would be the very worst of things. [238-9, British styling in the book]

A book recommendation:

In a brilliant study of the US entry into the Vietnam War, Andrew Preston shows that while Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy were reluctant to wage war and the State Department was largely opposed to intervention, the smaller and more nimble National Security Council, which strongly favoured war and operated beyond congressional oversight, narrowed down the president’s options on Vietnam until war was virtually unavoidable. (240, British styling in the book)

And the book’s excellent final words:

... the protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world. (562)

Notes:

- Sophie Chotek, the Archduke’s wife, was assassinated along with her husband. She was a Czech noblewoman. Prague was part of Austria-Hungary. Their marriage was unlike many other marriages among royalty and power—Ferdinand loved Chotek, and his marriage to her cost him favor in Austria, and cost him favor with his uncle, the King.

-Christopher Clark is a professor and historian.

something about “Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls” by David Sedaris

My David Sedaris read-a-thon continued with Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls, an essay collection released in 2013. I enjoy reading Sedaris. I had been reading him on my commute and sometimes before bed or when I wake in the middle of the night. Those times flew by.

An acquaintance said she thinks Sedaris really loves people. I think people interest him, but I do not think he loves them. In a previous post I noted that I find his moments of mockery conspicuous. But maybe you can mock and love people.

My favorite essay in Owls is not a funny or poignant one: it is "Day In, Day Out" because, in it, Sedaris describes how he developed his writing habit and subject matter choices by keeping journals. I enjoy reading good writers talk about writing, and this essay can help aspiring professional and hobbyist writers.

One of my favorite funny parts of Owls comes in “A Friend in the Ghetto,” Sedaris’s telling of his attempt in ninth grade to forge a relationship with an overweight black girl. In this telling, he calls her Delicia. He was using Delicia to relieve the peer pressure he felt to have a girlfriend and to score cheap social-justice points. At one point, Sedaris wants to bring Delicia with him to church; his mother objects, so David accuses his mother of objecting because she fears having half-black grandchildren. His mom replies:

“That’s right,” she said. “I want you to marry someone exactly like me, with a big beige purse and lots of veins in her legs. In fact, why don’t I just divorce your father so the two of us can run off together?”

“You’re disgusting,” I told her. “I’ll never marry you. Never!” I left the room in a great, dramatic huff, thinking, Did I just refuse to marry my mother? and then, secretly, I’m free! The part of my plan that made old people uncomfortable, that exposed them for the bigots they were—and on a Sunday!—still appealed to me. But the mechanics of it would have been a pain. Buses wouldn’t be running, so someone would have to drive to the south side, pick up Delicia, and then come back across town. After I’d finished shocking everyone, I’d have to somehow get her home. I didn’t imagine her aunt had a car. My mother wasn’t going to drive us, so that just left my dad, who would certainly be watching football and wouldn’t leave his spot in front of the TV even if my date was white and offered to chip in for the gas. Surely something could be arranged, but it seemed easier to take the out that had just been handed to me and to say that our date was forbidden.

Love seemed all the sweeter when it was misunderstood, condemned by the outside world.

Later, Sedaris breaks the news to Delicia that his parents are prejudiced, and she seems undisturbed, saying only that it was okay. To which Sedaris responds:

“Well, no, actually, it’s not okay,” I told her. “Actually, it stinks.” I laid my hand over hers on the desktop and then looked down at it, thinking what a great poster this would make. “Togetherness,” it might read. I’d expected electricity to pass mutually between us, but all I really felt was self-conscious, and disappointed that more people weren’t looking on.

I wonder if this is more fiction than truth.

My other favorite funny part in Owls comes in “The Happy Place,” an essay about Sedaris getting a colonoscopy. For the procedure, he is given propofol, which gives him a sleepy sense of euphoria. He writes of the experience:

Never had I experienced such an all-encompassing sense of well-being. Everything was soft-edged and lovely. Everyone was magnificent. Perhaps if I still drank and took drugs I might not have felt the effects so strongly, but except for some Dilaudid I’d been given for a kidney stone back in 2009, I had been cruelly sober for thirteen years.

After the procedure, Sedaris writes of waking and finding a woman in his room.

“I’m going to need for you to pass some gas,” said the woman putting papers into envelopes. She spoke as if she were a teacher, and I was a second-grade student. “Do you think you can do that for me?”

“For you, anything.” And as I did as I was instructed, I realized it was no different than playing a wind instrument. There were other musicians behind other curtains, and I swear I could hear them chiming in, the group of us forming God’s own horn section.

Reviews of books by Sedaris are not hard to find, and some of them trace changes in his writing. I have found Sedaris to be pretty consistent from one book to the next. And this is the fourth book of his that I have read, following Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Calypso, and When You AreEngulfed in Flames (and not counting The Best of Me, which a best-of rather than a stand-alone collection).

something about "When You Are Engulfed in Flames" by David Sedaris

The more David Sedaris I read, the more I find myself wincing at his judgy and selfish moments—even though his versions of these moments totally appeal to me. Everyone is judgmental and selfish sometimes, and Sedaris’s own descriptions of these times are so entertaining.

When You Are Engulfed in Flames, published in 2008, marks my third consecutive David Sedaris book. This collection of essays, like the others I have read, do not have an obvious theme. But smoking comes up a bit, and the book’s last section is an extended piece about Sedaris’s experience with quitting.

Here are some of my favorite passages from When You Are Engulfed in Flames. First, a moment dealing with a battle-axe of a neighbor named Helen:

While in France, I’d bought Helen some presents, nothing big or expensive, just little things a person could use and then throw away. I placed the bag of gifts n her kitchen table and she halfheartedly pawed through it, holding the objects upside down and sideways, the way a monkey might. A miniature roll of paper towels, disposable napkins with H’s printed on them, kitchen sponges tailored to fit the shape of the hand: “I don’t have any use for this crap,” she said. “Take it away. I don’t want it.”

And here is a passage from an essay about going to the doctor for his kidney stone. Sedaris undressed and found his way to a waiting room—but without having first put on the robe available to him:

It’s funny the things that run through your mind when you’re sitting in your underpants in front of a pair of strangers. Suicide comes up, but, just as you embrace it as a viable option, you remember that you don’t have the proper tools: no belt to wrap around your neck, no pen to drive through your nose or ear and up into your brain. I thought briefly of swallowing my watch, but there was no guarantee I’d choke on it. It’s embarrassing, but, given the way I normally eat, it would probably go down fairly easily, strap and all. A clock might be a challenge, but a Timex the size of a fifty-cent piece, no problem.

Then the conclusion of an essay about his affection for spiders (and disaffection with pet dogs and cats):

I suppose there’s a place in everyone’s heart that’s reserved for another species. My own is covered in cobwebs rather than dog or cat hair, and, because of this, people assume it doesn’t exist. It does, though, and I felt it ache when Katrina hit. The TV was on, the grandmother signaled from her rooftop, and I found myself wondering, with something akin to panic, if there were any spiders in her house.

I love this description of the anxiety he feels before his partner Hugh takes him out for a meal:

“A restaurant? But what will we talk about?”

“I don’t know,” he’ll say. “What does it matter?” 

 

Alone together, I enjoy our companionable silence, but it creeps me out to sit in public, propped in our chairs like a pair of mummies. At a nearby table there’s always a couple in their late seventies, blinking at their menus from behind thick glasses.

“Soup’s a good thing,” the wife will say, and the man will nod or grunt or fool with the stem of his wineglass. Eventually he’ll look my way, and I’ll catch in his eyes a look of grim recognition. “We are your future,” he seems to say. “Get used to it.”

I’m so afraid that Hugh and I won’t have anything to talk about that now, before leaving home, I’ll comb the papers and jot down a half dozen topics that might keep a conversation going at least through the entrées.

Here is a fun rundown of smokers and their brands:

It was in a little store a block from our hotel that I bought my first pack of cigarettes. The ones I'd smoked earlier had been Ronnie's—Pall Malls, I think—and though they tasted no better or worse than I thought they would, I felt that in the name of individuality I should find my own brand, something separate. Something me. Carltons, Kents, Alpines: it was like choosing a religion, for weren't Vantage people fundamentally different from those who'd taken to Larks or Newports? What I didn't realize was that you could convert, that you were allowed to. The Kent person could, with very little effort, become a Vantage person, though it was harder to go from menthol to regular, or from regular-sized to ultralong. All rules had their exceptions, but the way I came to see things, they generally went like this: Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were tor procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't. One should never loan money to a Marlboro menthol smoker, though you could usually count on a regular Marlboro person to pay you back. The eventual subclasses of milds, lights, and ultralights would not only throw a wrench into the works, but make it nearly impossible for anyone to keep your brand straight, but that all came later, along with warning labels and American Spirits.

And, finally, Sedaris remembers the first time someone asked him for a cigarette:

Take this guy who approached me after I left the store, this guy with a long black braid. It wasn’t the gentle, ropy kind you’d have if you played the flute but something more akin to a bullwhip: a prison braid, I told myself. A month earlier, I might have simply cowered, but now I put a cigarette in my mouth—the way you might if you were about to be executed. This man was going to rob me, then lash me with his braid and set me on fire—but no. “Give me one of those,” he said, and he pointed to the pack I was holding. I handed him a Viceroy, and when he thanked me I smiled and thanked him back.

It was, I later thought, as if I’d been carrying a bouquet and he’d asked me for a single daisy. He loved flowers, I loved flowers, and wasn’t it beautiful that our mutual appreciation could transcend our various differences, and somehow bring us together? I must have thought, too, that had the situation been reversed he would have been happy to give me a cigarette, though my theory was never tested. I may have been a Boy Scout for only two years, but the motto stuck with me forever: “Be Prepared.” This does not mean “Be Prepared to Ask People for Shit”; it means “Think Ahead and Plan Accordingly, Especially in Regard to Your Vices.”

something about a David Sedaris best-of

The Best of Me is a David Sedaris best-of collection that was released in 2020—more than 25 years into his professional writing career. Sedaris supposedly picked out the essays himself. The publisher's copy claims Sedaris's "words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision." I think that is debatable. I probably should not have read this because doing so will lead me to skip ahead when I come across these essays in the other books.

Note: I've read and thoroughly enjoyed more Sedaris since drafting this.

something about "Paper Lion" by George Plimpton

George Plimpton was an American journalist and writer. Paper Lion describes his experience in 1963 joining the training camp of the Detroit Lions, a National Football League team. Plimpton, 36 years old at the time and not an athlete, tried out to be the team's third-string quarterback. Paper Lion expands on a two-part piece Plimpton wrote for Sports Illustrated in September 1964.

The book, published in 1966, is a widely read example of Plimpton's "participatory journalism." It followed up on a similar project, Out of My League, in which Plimpton participated in an American professional baseball all-star exhibition game. These books attempt to ask, How would the average man do in competition with professional athletes?

What comes off to me, though, is one guy who, for reasons probably having a lot to do with class, spends a lot of time among people he cannot relate to. And the prose is a language time capsule.

Overall, Paper Lion was fine. But I think the book would have worked just as well at half the length.

Note: Plimpton is the tall guy in the photo. Paper Lion was made into a movie, released in 1968 as a sports comedy, starring Alan Alda as Plimpton. Have not seen it.

something about “Working,” a book by Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel (1912–2008) was an American historian, broadcaster, and writer; in 1974, he published Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, a nonfiction book that—true to its title—catalogs many, many people of various walks of life talking about their work. During his lifetime, Terkel produced a few works based on his wonderings about the lives of the strangers you pass every day.

This is probably an okay or even fine book, but I grew annoyed by the too-on-the-nose “regular guy” voices. It was like, “I’m what you call a [job title]. Our system isn’t perfect. But we make do. The other day, we were cranking the [name of something]. I’m thinking, ‘I can’t believe this. What are we doing over here?’ Then I get $50, which made me feel great! So that’s the deal.” Five hundred pages of this.

Note: For reasons I do not understand and have not bothered to look into, I associate Terkel with Chicago baseball.

 

something about Skip Bayless’ “God's Coach: The Hymns, Hype, and Hypocrisy of Tom Landry's Cowboys”

Long before he was a clicks-generator for ESPN, Skip Bayless was a well-regarded, award-winning journalist. He started at The Miami Herald, moved on to the Los Angeles Times, then, in the late 1970s, moved to Dallas to be lead sports columnist covering America’s Team during the Cowboys' peak celebrity.

In 1989, after several years' of writing Cowboys columns, Bayless tried to cash in and published God's Coach: The Hymns, Hype, and Hypocrisy of Tom Landry's Cowboys. The book streaks through the times and personnel behind the Cowboys’ rise to national prominence, the team’s decades-long winning run, and the organization’s disillusioning decline and cold-turkey break with legendary coach Tom Landry.

God's Coach is not flattering for Landry or the organization. Influential general manger Tex Schramm, the team's front office, and some big-name former players all get sacked in Bayless’ book. And he describes Landry—"the man in the funny hat," as was affectionately known—as a deeply religious man coaching in a corrupt organization, withholding emotionally to keep players working for his approval, and, eventually, getting passed by as the game evolved and times changed.

I enjoyed reading parts of God's Coach, including the opinions of Landry's great assistant coaches and some long-forgotten background bits on former players. Plus, Bayless' sport-column-writing style, with its dumb wit and constant motion, works well in longform here. But, overall, I found the book distasteful largely because Bayless engages in a lot of suggestion and innuendo, frequently framing accusations as questions. Bayless' premise—that Landry the man was not as good as Landry the legend—is a straw man. Did anyone in 1989 believe Landry and the Cowboys were perfect? No. But many believed that the iconic coach deserved respect.

Bayless does not know the meaning of the word.

Finding someone with a bad word to say about the Cowboys will never be a problem—especially when the team is down, like it was in '89. But Landry and the organization did not have a losing season from 1966 to 1986. And, in that time, the Cowboys won 13 division titles and made five Super Bowl appearances, winning twice.

The team owner, Bum Bright (who was losing a bundle in the savings and loan crisis at the time), sold the team to a 40-something Jerry Jones for $140 million in 1989, and Landry was fired after 29 seasons. Bayless writes that Bright and Schramm intended to fire Landry whether or not the team was sold. I do not doubt that they would have looked for a way to offer Landry a dignified exit; and I need not doubt that Jerry Jones was one key source for the book. Many Cowboys fans still associate Jones with Landry's undignified dismissal.

Hats off to Tom Landry.

Note: Landry was 6’2” and fit as hell his whole life. He wore a suit on the sidelines, but, in practice, he was poppin' in t-shirts and shorts. The man died in 2000.

something about “Falter” by Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben's was one of the first widely heard voices on the dangers of man-made climate change. His book, The End of Nature, cut through in 1989 with clear and urgent descriptions of the threat. McKibben has written maybe a dozen works since then, and in April 2019, he published Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, which follows up on his 1989 warning.

I had enough to worry about when I started reading this, and I grew even more depressed and anxious with each paragraph. The last section of the book aims to inspire a final, last-ditch hope—but what is the use now?

Here is a good review of this book:

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/its-not-too-late-to-stem-climate-change-but-we-have-no-more-time-to-waste/2019/04/26/8406aa64-525b-11e9-88a1-ed346f0ec94f_story.html

 

Note: Today is the last day of the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow.

something about "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil," by Hannah Arendt

Adolf Eichmann played a leading role in the deportation of Jews from Germany and a significant role in the logistical implementation of the Nazis' "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." After Israel's Mossad captured Eichmann in 1960 in Buenos Aires, the state of Israel tried him in Jerusalem for collaborating in the persecution of the Jewish civilian population. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962.

Hannah Arendt, a political theorist, reported on Adolf Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker. Her writing was revised and enlarged for a book published in 1964. In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt draws out insights big and small as she dissects the trial and shares historical research. It is a fascinating blend of reporting, insightful meditation, and history.

The book's title captures the theme that emerged from the trial, according to Arendt. Eichmann came off as fairly average: an obedient, law-abiding, rule-following joiner, with no trace of mental illness and no real hatred for Jews. But he could not think for himself. Furthermore, he had no career plan and came to his position in the regime almost by accident; and, there, he found he had a knack for logistical planning. And when the regime's plan to expel the Jews changed into a plan to exterminate them, Eichmann accepted the change and the given rationale that doing so was the most humane option.

Arendt closes the last chapter by describing how Eichmann, after walking readily to his execution, offered a clichéd string of last words. This was wholly in character for him. "It was as though in those last moments he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil."

Arendt is reluctant to call the whole episode a show trial, but aspects seem to beg the description in Arendt's telling. Eichmann, who played an important role in the most horrific event of the century, stood in for the whole German Reich, and the execution was largely an act of vengeance.

For various reasons, including her descriptions of how some Jews helped implement Nazi policies against fellow Jews, Arendt came under heavy criticism after the book's publication. She addressed the criticism in a postscript added in a subsequent edition. She ends the postscript by stating that the trial did fulfill "the demands of justice."

Notes:

• Hannah Arendt is a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
• Favorite sentence: "So Eichmann's opportunities for feeling like Pontius Pilate were many, and as the months and the years went by, he lost the need to feel anything at all." 
• I suspect Arendt cleverly sought to satisfy her most vicious critic with the cliché about "the demands of justice." 

 

something about "Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge," a nonfiction book by Jim Schutze

Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge, by Jim Schutze, was a best-selling true crime book in 1998. It was adapted into the 2001 film "Bully," directed by Larry Clark. The crime involves the brutal murder of Bobby Kent, a vicious kid in a comfortable, middle-class Ft. Lauderdale beach community. Kent's best friend and a group of peers lured Kent to his death. 

 

This is the story of a damaged and depraved community. Schutze, a local Dallas journalist, is pitiless and closes his book with a swipe at the adults loitering at the edges of the kids' lives. Reading this dissolves a little more faith in humanity. It's great.

an album review of “Let’s Not (And Say We Did)” by Zeahorse

The blurry streetlights and bitterly ferocious noise rock of Sidney.

Zeahorse’s latest album tyrannosauruses through a world experiencing a mass-extinction event. The first song, “Designer Smile,” careens forward with its weight-throwing groove and tyrannical vocals. The sweaty, raving lyrics—“I wish you could see me know / I'm exercising my designer smile!”—sound both insecure and commanding.

Let’s Not (And Say We Did) is the Sydney-based band’s third album and first in over four years. Zeahorse’s sound calls to mind bands like Unwound and Fugazi. Think noise rock and post-punk.

After a couple of galloping tracks, Zeahorse canter through a chunkier groove on “Guilty.” The lyrics describe treading water in a hyper-self-conscious culture of self-improvement. The rising and falling vocal sneers, “When our heads get turned into mush, blame it on the hoo-haa, the Friday night fuss ‘cause I’m dated and bloated and boring and sinking / The party will never end with someone like you / Whatever you do will only make it worse; whatever you do now will only make it hurt.”

On “The Ladder,” Zeahorse bare teeth at the ladder-climbing company man: “Ah, I climb the ladder—there is nothing better! If I could be the spanner, will you be my hammer? Ah, I climb the ladder—there is nothing better! I could be a friend to everyone!” This disaffected lament boils over to the sound of hard-charging post-punk.

Find a slight change in sound, from post-punk to a sludge-gummed crush, on “20 Nothing.” The song opens with a big beat, then rolls out a savage bass tone that sounds great with splashy cymbals. Zeahorse flash big, broad noise-rock stripes and more satire in the lyrics: “I'm so happy, I'm so ready to turn my moments into nothing / Suffocating under the money tree / This ain’t no place for you, and it ain’t no place for me.”

The four-piece band keeps it loud in the pocket. Songs on Let’s Not (And Say We Did) seethe massive grooves and layered, blaring vocals. The singing has that quality of sounding taunting, scolding, and pleading all at once—Johnny Rotten-style, already done. The lyrics deliver indelicate attacks on the materialistic, shallow, and image-obsessed—familiar targets and features of culture that, the louder you rail against them, the more they envelope you.

 

Note: Not really my taste in music, but I think it sounds good and can imagine others enjoying it.