http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Tue, 9 May 2006 14:17:36 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. 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Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/09/141736.php Quo VadisThis is a short (220pp), pithy, beautifully written account of Iraq and the Iraqis from earliest times to today, written by an American whose Middle East academic credentials are impressive and who was also actively involved with US Middle East policy under the Kennedy administration. He dismisses the current disastrous US/UK military action in a few short sentences: it was always about the oil. Rather a strange experience for an Australian to read this in Australia on Anzac Day, our glorious national celebration of military defeat, and to realise for the first time that the spectacularly unsuccessful and bloody attempt by Australian troops and others to occupy Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I was a direct consequence of Britain's decision to invade Iraq in November 1914 and a few days later to declare war on the Ottoman empire. So this current invasion of Iraq by Western forces was in fact preceded, only a few short decades ago, by another. And those two invasions were of course preceded by countless others, over thousands of years. Did Australian Prime Minister John Howard make that historical link, do you suppose, when he decided to commit Australian troops to the Coalition of the Willing? Did he ask himself whether Australians needed another Gallipoli?In 1914, according to Polk, British military strategists made no bones about the reason for their action: as for today, it was explicitly to protect their oil sources. Forty-odd years of uneasy British occupation of Iraq followed, until the revolution of 1958 which installed Saddam's predecessors. Are Americans prepared for 40 years of occupation this time round, one wonders? Those who have read their history books perhaps should be.The plain moral of Polk's story, and its hard to disagree, can be summed up in Santayana's familiar dictum: those who don't understand history are condemned to repeat it... and never more so than in contemporary Iraq, home to one of the oldest civilisations on the planet and one of the newest geopolitical nightmares. Books47490@blogcritics.org Tue, 9 May 2006 14:17:36 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/06/213729.php Quo VadisIs there any commentator more regularly misjudged and misquoted than Fukuyama? His 1992 magnum opus The End of History and the Last Man has been the launching pad for innumerable opinion pieces, most structured along the lines of "ho ho ho, silly old Fuku-san thought history was over, but hey, he was wrong!"Actually, he's not such a soft target. The End of History is not an easy read, but it repays the effort, and offers a genuinely thoughtful and at the time fairly novel proposition: that there is now a broad global consensus, right across the political spectrum, that liberal democracy, capital markets and competition work better than any other known system. So it is history in the Hegelian and Marxist sense of the word that he proposes has come to a conclusion rather than all human history, as his sillier detractors imply. Even if you do not agree with him, it's a thought-provoking idea, and who is to blame an author of a fairly abstruse work for dreaming up a catchy title? Anyway, this is his latest effort, published a few weeks ago - bought in Oxford Street, London, with a flashy cover and entitled After the Neocons. Amusingly, in the US it has a sober black cover and an alternative title, America at the Crossroads. Fukuyama's nose for a catchy title or two, tailored to the local market, is still in fine working order.This one is much more readable. Success and fame have brought in their wake better prose - pointed, concise and with a refined sense of humour lacking before. Fukuyama claims, perhaps with some justification, that his ideas became part of the intellectual apparatus of the neoconservative administration of George Bush. He now wishes to formally repudiate the association, and mounts a ferocious critique of his government's current foreign policy and ideology. This brief monograph (just over 190 pages of large double-spaced type plus critical apparatus) traces the early history of neoconservatism as a school of thought, then explains how its ideas, perhaps not that intrinsically smart to start with, have been systematically altered and debased by the current rulers of America. He concludes with a couple of chapters of positive suggestions, one on alternative and more effective global institutions, and one on American foreign policy.The reader may mutter, well, well, easy enough to be an armchair critic and theorist, of course, (but is it really that easy?) Nevertheless, the views which emanate from Fukuyama's cosy upholstery at Yale are always a cut or two above the average, and usually do merit thoughtful reading and debate, never more so than here, where we can all enjoy the rare enough spectacle of one of the most celebrated and respected conservative theorists decisively distancing himself from the increasing global catastrophe that is George Bush abroad.Also available as After the Neocons at AmazonUK (ISBN 1861979223). Books47358@blogcritics.org Sat, 6 May 2006 21:37:29 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/05/05/113549.php Quo VadisDo you wanna dance, under the moonlight, kiss me kiss me, all through the night, oh baby, do you wanna dance? Le Nozze de Figaro, Act IVDavid Cairns was music critic of the London Daily Telegraph and founded the Chelsea Opera in 1950 with the sole purpose of giving himself the opportunity to sing Leporello in an amateur production of Don GiovanniThose two factlets tell you everything you need to know about this book - it combines a British urbanity and considerable erudition and insight with a tireless commitment to self-indulgence and a rarefied hedonism. This is not as maladroit a recipe for an engaging read as you might suppose. Does the world need another book about Mozart? Cairns asks in his introduction. Probably not, he cheerfully admits, but he plans to write one anyway. He loves these operas so much, he tells us, he feels compelled to share the love. Well, if you have an obliging publisher, why not?So he takes us lovingly through a detailed analysis of the historical context and musical structure of Mozart's legendary works - Idomeneo, the three Da Ponte operas, Zauberflote and La Clemenza di Tito. This harmonious sextet is topped and tailed by a preliminary recitative covering Mozart's early life and operas and a coda that briefly charts the well-known story of his final days. If you love the operas, as Cairns does, you'll enjoy the book, and the love. Unnecessary books are sometimes just a delicious treat. Not unlike dancing in the moonlight... Books47302@blogcritics.org Fri, 5 May 2006 11:35:49 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/04/30/214337.php Quo VadisThis is by no stretch of the imagination a good book, but an unusually interesting one for followers of contemporary British politics. You know the author, of course, Bonkin' Boris, elected representative of the commutariat of Henley-on-Thames in the House of Commons, former editor of The Spectator and, in between episodes of tabloid disgrace, a shadow Tory minister in the UK parliament, one of London's great erudite and erring eccentrics. Who would not wish secretly, as I do, to be Boris, with his wit, his bicycle and his series of improbably high-profile amorous folies a deux? Steeped (like its author) in the comic tradition of the early Evelyn Waugh, without for a moment reaching those heights, this book does start rather well -- indeed, schooled by the British literary establishment in the supreme importance of a memorable opening sentence, Boris has slaved over his to get it just about right. As it is improbable in the extreme that you, dear reader, will ever buy or wade through this book, it is no great sin to reproduce it here: On what he had every reason to believe would be the last day of his undistinguished political career, Roger Barlow awoke in a state of sexual excitement and with a gun to his head, the one fading as he became aware of the other. Unfortunately, the story also rather detumesces from that point on, in the effort to keep an impossibly complex plot involving a bumbling Jihadist conspiracy to blow up Uncle POTUS in the crumbly if hallowed precincts of Westminster Hall. No sub-plot, byway, or implausible background story is left unexplored, nor is any opportunity to show off arcane knowledge left unexploited. Johnson's primary political question for the persevering reader (growing every more dispirited as the light touch is replaced by weary slog) is whether one should love or hate America, in the light of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Paul Newman Salad Dressing, and a thousand other indignities. After a few enjoyable set pieces and a great deal of self-indulgence, the question is left unanswered, apart from one's prior knowledge of The Spectator and its general attitude of amused contempt and affection for the Yank. Books47049@blogcritics.org Sun, 30 Apr 2006 21:43:37 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/02/01/151134.php Quo VadisOne of several pleasing byproducts of a recent trip to NYC and Philadelphia was the discovery/digestion of Iain Pears' rather cerebral but entirely entertaining art history mystery series - six titles altogether of which The Raphael Affair is the first. I managed to pick up five of them in Barnes & Noble on 5th Ave and probably 43rd St for $6.50 each, and the last in Philadelphia, more expensive (not really a problem) but larger and bound differently and therefore, irritatingly, spoiling the arrangement on the bookshelf.Like most good detective story sequences these must be read strictly in order. Together they chart the history of the affable, muddleheaded but inevitably utterly charming English art historian Jonathan Argyll as he more or less accidentally embraces life in Rome, a gradual love affair with an (equally inevitably) beautiful but feisty Roman detective, and a series of art-related crimes in which the crime itself is reflected, and its solution contained by, the art work at the centre of the story.Tore through these at a tremendous pace, finishing the last one up on the plane home. Perhaps time to re-tackle Pears' rather more serious effort An Instance of the Fingerpost (1998), which many readers have liked much less. But look, how organised, one book a year for six years...The Jonathan Argyll Art History MysteriesThe Raphael Affair (1991) The Titian Committee (1992) The Bernini Bust (1993) The Last Judgment (1994) Giotto's Hand (1995) Death and Restoration (1996) Books43038@blogcritics.org Wed, 1 Feb 2006 15:11:34 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/30/224717.php Quo VadisDidn't read Berendt's first bestseller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evilž discouraged by the unbearably pretentious title. This one was harder to resist at the Philadelphia airport bookstore last week - promising the story of the rebuilding of the Gran Teatro La Fenice after the catastrophic fire of 1996In fact it is a kaleidoscope (or perhaps just a mish mash) of reportage about a variety of connected and unconnected aspects of Venice and the Venetians - stories that caught his eye or his ear during a lengthy stay. The blurb on the fly leaf says Berendt is a journalist: that's the key: his prose comes straight from Time magazine. Every subject's clothes and hair are documented, and the contents of every room. Every conversation is meticulously transcribed - presumably a taperecorder never left his side.The spaces, inferences between the ponderous observations are left for the reader to fill in, as Berendt describes all the venality and vanity which present themselves to his unflustered gaze. So this more recent title turns out to be a rather unsubtle metaphor for the human descents from grace documented so carefully in its slow-turning pages.Venice La Fenice Sinking Fund Books42967@blogcritics.org Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:47:17 EST