Crabwalk - a quick review
Gunter Grass is an iconic figure in German, rather, world literature, with a resounding classic like The Tin Drum in his portfolio and having been awarded the Nobel in 1999. I didn't really enjoy The Tin Drum but that I attribute to a shortcoming on my part and not of the writing itself, now my appreciation of that kind of literature has only, well, appreciated.

Crabwalk is an examination of what was one of the great maritime disasters of the last century, the greatest actually, as the author keeps reminding us throughout the book. This book has been called one of Grass' most accessible works, and it is, unless the translator (Krishna Winston), did a terrible job, but we'll give him the benefit of doubt here. The title refers to the erratic manner a crab makes progress, sliding this way and that and the narration tries to hold true to that notion, but the book is still fairly simply structured. The narrator was born, amazingly and miraculously, at the very instant the Wilhelm Gustoloff sank after being hit by three torpedoes from a Russian U-Boat. I find it a little amusing and very instructive, this emphasis on births of coincidence in some of the great books I've read, for example, Rushdie has his protagonist being born at the very instant of India's independence in Midnight's Children and Omar Khayyam Shakil, hero of Shame, again by Rushdie, is born seemingly of three interchangeable moms.

Being a very short book there are some obvious shortcomings, though it is a quick read and none too demanding, the characters fail to make a lasting impression, from the mother who is obsessed with that single event of her life, to the son that lets himself be misled and misguided enough to be absolutely certain of his flawed convictions. The author tells of the assasination of the person Wilhelm Gustoloff an incident that resulted in the christening of the ship after him, Gustoloff's assassin David Frankfurther who committed the act with a hope to rally the Jews against rising Nazi atrocities, of of the U-Boat captain who was motivated by a little more than duty and patriotism when he took those shots and of the narrator's son who is enraged by the fact that this significant loss of life remains buried in a sense of shame amongst the Germans.

The end of the book is poignant, almost hopeless, as it concludes with the refusal of history to leave us alone, of its habit to keep repeating, like a crab walking in incessant, imperfect circles. A decent Sunday afternoon read, I couldn't help feeling a slight sense of having missed out on some nuance that may have been lost in translation. posted by ubaid - Saturday, May 29, 2004 at 1:08 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously

another poem
It's been a while, so here's a poem I came across in Stephen King's On Writing, it's by his wife, and novelist, Tabitha King,

A Gradual Canticle for Augustine

The thinnest bear is awakened in winter
by the sleep-laughter of locusts,
by the dream-blustering of bees,
by the honeyed scent of desert sands,
that the wind carries in her womb
into the distant hills, into the houses of Cedar.

The bear has heard a sure promise.
Certain words are edible; they nourish
more than snow heaped upon silver plates
or ice overflowing golden bowls. Chips of ice
from the mouth of a lover are not always better,
Nor a desert dreaming always a mirage.

The rising bear sings a gradual canticle
woven of sand that conquers cities
by a slow cycle. His praise seduces
a passing wind, traveling to the sea
wherein a fish, caught in a careful net,
hears a bear`s song in the cool-scented snow.

posted by ubaid - at 11:27 AM - 0 comments - post anonymously

history repeating?
Can we kick Israel from the community of nations now? No really, what about now?
The IDF's actions in Gaza are bringing back memories of the Shoah for some, via today's Washington Post,

"On TV I saw an old woman rummaging through the ruins of her house looking for her medication, and it reminded me of my grandmother who was thrown out of her house during the Shoah," or Holocaust, Lapid (Justice Minister Yosef Lapid - ub) told Israel radio in an interview after the weekly session.

In the radio interview, Lapid also disclosed that the army is developing plans for demolishing up to 2,000 more houses to expand the security corridor between the camp and the Egyptian border to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza. Israel has already destroyed an estimated 1,300 houses in the area since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, uprooting an estimated 11,000 people.

The destruction of homes must stop because it is "inhuman, un-Jewish, and causes us great harm around the world," Lapid added. "In the end we'll be kicked out of the U.N., we'll be put on trial in The Hague [seat of the International Court of Justice], and no one will want to have anything to do with us."

There are some wars you know who to take a stand with and some where the protagonists spiral the violence to include civilains without any regard for who's culpable and who's not. I don't see how the Palestinians or the Israelis are moving toward any sort of solution or lasting peace, it is just not happening, and a pitifully small number of people seem to realize that. posted by ubaid - Sunday, May 23, 2004 at 12:35 PM - 1 comments - post anonymously

nick berg
I tried watching the Nick Berg beheading video a couple of hours ago and am still reeling from the worst kind of visual and aural offense I've ever been subject to. The first couple of seconds show the about to be brutally slaughtered Nick being tackled to the floor as loud voices ring out with seeming righteousness "Allahu-akbar! Allahu-akbar!", to reconcile the recitation of God's name with the horrifying scene I was seeing, was like being dealt an extremely violent and very painful blow in the stomach. I'd stopped the video without watching the actual beheading but did skip forward to again confront the image of a severed head being held up like a filthy trophy, a sorry mistake. What a sad, depressing day this has turned out to be. posted by ubaid - Thursday, May 13, 2004 at 8:38 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously

twenty four. phew!
posted by ubaid - Wednesday, May 12, 2004 at 8:56 PM - 3 comments - post anonymously

hallelujah!
Go ahead, leave a comment, make my day! posted by ubaid - Monday, May 10, 2004 at 10:55 PM - 1 comments - post anonymously

bush gets a tongue lashing
As one of the Iraq war's staunchest supporters, this diatribe by Tacitus against George W. Bush and his handling of the occupation does come as a little surprise, though there had been a build up. Fool, fool, fool he repeats.

One wonders in stupefaction at the magnitude of this folly. Trite phrases spring to mind: in particular, "It is worse than a crime -- it is a mistake." In this case, the mistake is the crime, and it is terrible indeed. It is hardly too much to call it dereliction of duty: with the United States in a global war of extermination not of its choosing against a jihadist foe, the one man ultimately responsible for protecting our nation from that foe ordered our forces to stand down when the enemy was trapped and doomed. Now they live. Now they go free. Now they tell their tales, share their lessons, regroup and re-arm. And why? Because George W. Bush feared Arab public opinion? Because George W. Bush, incredibly, caved to pressure from the United Nations? Because George W. Bush didn't have the backbone to finish the job?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Fool. The region is ablaze with terrorist activity, and you just gave them new heroes, new mentors, and a new victory. You weak fool. Hundreds of our countrymen dead in a just fight against Ba'athist tyranny, and you allow that general in that uniform to stride into Fallujah as ruler with your imprimatur. You self-deluding fool. Iraqis see us as defeated, because you forgot the crux of the problem. You damned fool. You legitimized another Islamist party, set Islamist radicals free, gave the Sunni revanchists heart, and doomed Iraq as a unitary state. You hypocritical fool. Like a good liberal, your solution to a problem was -- the tragic irony! -- to create another government agency to paper it over. You ignorant fool. They have found the price we are unwilling to pay for victory, and now they will demand it every time. You callow fool. You spilled Marine blood for nothing. You feckless fool. It may take a decade or more, but I can guarantee you that your lack of spine will pay off in American blood spilled at jihadi hands. In Iraq, it has already begun. But it won't stay in Iraq. It's coming here, to these shores. It's coming back, because the only thing keeping it away was vigor and resolution greater than theirs. That's gone. That's gone, you fool.

There is a price to winning this war. Every time we have failed to exert control, the price went up. When we failed to stop the looting, the price went up. When we failed to quell Fallujah early, the price went up. When we failed to stand up to Sistani, the price went up. When we failed to stand up to Sadr, the price went up. When we lost control of the highways, the price went up. When we failed to enter Najaf, the price went up. Now we have failed to quell Fallujah a second time -- and I fear the price has thus gone up immensely, massively, tremendously. It is as if the lessons of history have taught us nothing. If we lose this war -- and we must now steel ourselves for this very real possibility -- do not forget, never forget, that we chose to lose. There was never anything inevitable about this: we were not forced, but by the President's own lack of judgment and backbone, to stand down before the fanatics, murderers, and tribesmen of Mesopotamia.

One thing I don't agree with in this analysis is the assertion that GWB is fearsome of Arab public opinion or that he caved to pressure from the United Nations, that is an incredibly silly thing to say considering this is the man who defied world opinion in his single minded purpose of taking Iraq. The real reason for the mess in Iraq is that GWB in not a true statesman, he's not a nation builder, he may stay the course but he lacks the foresight that is the mark of a great leader, he is a demagogue, an inarticulate man whose obvious incompetence still seems to be lost on a large proportion of the people of America. And he seems to be heading a group of ideologues who are more interested in enforcing an agenda, an idea, which is not only flawed in reasoning, but ultimately, destructive. Instead of being a safer place, instead of rooting out terrorism, we've seen Iraq being metamorphosed into the fountainhead of terrorist activity, the results of which are getting horrifyingly obvious in every part of the world with every passing day, with every bomb attack that strikes at the heart of everyday life with chilling destructiveness. This country of great thinkers, architects, engineers and economists, doctors and Nobel prize winners, Fortune 500 companies and their CEOs, the world's most technologically advanced country, the representative of all that's good in the West, the beacon of prosperity, now seems stranded, stupefyingly, in a hopeless leadership void. Democracy stands hijacked by ideology. Flawed ideology that is.
posted by ubaid - Sunday, May 02, 2004 at 2:58 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously

in the name of islam...
...they are proposing to burn churches (via Tacitus) and poisoning six year old school girls. Revolting.
posted by ubaid - at 2:44 PM - 0 comments - post anonymously