Tag: tony judt

"Few would have predicted it sixty years before, but the twenty-first century might yet belong to Europe."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’ve done it.

I have finally, finally, finally finished Postwar (amazon | kobo) by Tony Judt, having started it…I don’t know, like a year ago. I must have read north of a half dozen other books during breaks from this one…not because it was bad — it’s actually an incredible book when you consider what it does — but because it was 831 pages of relatively dense historical perspective.

Length aside, there’s another reason why this feels like an accomplishment: in finishing it I also conclude my self-made 8-book series about WWI and WWII. I wanted to know more about the buildup and aftermath of each war, and having read these I feel like I do. These books, read (amongst many others) over the past four years, were:

  • The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
  • A Short History of WWI by James Stokesbury
  • Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan
  • The Coming Of The Third Reich by Richard Evans
  • The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s by Piers Brendon
  • A Short History of WWII by James Stokesbury
  • A Writer At War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 by Vasily Grossman
  • Postwar by Tony Judt

If you find yourself curious about how exactly the Nazis were able to come to power, or why Europe and the Middle East were divided up as they were, or which army truly beat back Hitler’s armies, or any other aspect (at a high level, anyway) of the wars, I’d highly recommend any and all of these.

This week in entertainment

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

I’d kind of forgotten about all the movies we’ve watched over the past week:

  • Kick-Ass: most excellent
  • Precious: good, incredibly well-acted (in that if I ever see Mo’Nique walking down the street I’m likely to punch her face in) but hard as fuck to watch
  • Stripes: I’m sure it was a classic for its time, but it doesn’t really hold up.
  • Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day: look, the original isn’t exactly a classic, but it’s always been kind of special to me because we discovered it ten years ago in a self-serve movie rental machine, not having any idea what we were about to see. I didn’t expect the sequel to live up to that, but I would have been happy with a close approximation of the original. Unfortunately it was hammy and stilted and over the top, and not in the cool way that the first one was. Lots of shots of my neighbourhood though, just like the first one.
  • The Men Who Stare At Goats: I think I had the same reaction as most other people: quite funny in parts, but nothing special. Also: Ewan MacGregor continues to do the worst American accent of any British actor.
  • Paranormal Activity: Okay, we watched this two weeks ago, but whatever. Actually a pretty effective little scare-machine, but completely blew it in the final 20 seconds. Also: Katie Featherston = girlfriend du jour.

.:.

My headphones were filled all week with the new releases by Best Coast (pretty good…almost like the Raveonettes without the male voice), Japandroids (good, but not as good as their last album, I’m afraid; few things last year were), Sleigh Bells (which I like more than I feel I should), Mates of State (hearing them cover the likes of Tom Waits and The Mars Volta seems sacrilegious at first, then awesome, then just fun) and, naturally, The Arcade Fire. Which is < Funeral but > Black Mirror and therefore one of the best things I’ve heard all year. Speaking of CadeFire — which is what I call them now, due to us being so very tight — Frank Yang (aka Chromewaves) summed up awfully well what’s so captivating about them:

They somehow manage to evoke that singular moment in everyone’s life where youth gives way to adulthood, where one becomes acutely aware of the fact that they are not in fact invincible, that they will someday die, but also the sense of still having their entire lives ahead of them and the sense of opportunity that offers – that mixture of anxiety and optimism, insecurity and confidence. It’s a powerful, primal resonance made even moreso when rendered in broad, bold musical strokes. With Funeral, it was conveyed through the lens of family and neighbourhoods, of being part of a special gang. Neon Bible turned it around to be them against the world with no sense that they’d actually triumph. And The Suburbs realizes that there’s no us and them, there’s just everyone.

I’ll probably keep The Suburbs on perma-rotation until my next big anticipated release: Lisbon by The Walkmen.

.:.

With Treme, The Office, Friday Night Lights, 30 Rock and Nurse Jackie off the air right now the only things I’m watching are Mad Men (because it’s the best thing on TV right now), True Blood (because it’s the most entertaining thing on TV right now) and Entourage (because, despite its persistent suck whenever Ari’s not on the screen, for the life of me I cannot seem to stop watching it).

.:.

The miniature time slot attributed to reading is reserved for, as ever, Tony Judt‘s Postwar and Kate Carraway’s twitter feed. However, all other reading shall cease on Tuesday and Wednesday as I have only those days to select our TIFF films.

.:.

And, with that, I’m off to work. After all, all play and no work makes Jack really far behind on his to-do list.

"Where wealth accumulates, and men decay."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

This past Saturday I attended a tiger-related cupcake sale (don’t ask; it’s a long story) at a friend’s house. They grilled sausages and poured wine and introduced people who would never otherwise meet and, in some cases, renewed acquaintances. On such reunion for me was with Fraser, the host’s father, to whom I’d been introduced but not really spoken much. As we ate and drank in the backyard, talk turned to books, and specifically recommendations thereof. Fraser suggested a few, and I mentioned I was always on the lookout for something to switch off with the book I’ve been reading for some time: Tony Judt‘s Postwar. While it’s more gripping than any 800-page history of the past 65 years has the right to be, it remains nonetheless a daunting read requiring frequent forays into the light (like Tom Rachman‘s The Imperfectionists) or the brutally simple (like Cormac McCarthy‘s Blood Meridian), and so I welcomed his suggestions. As it happened Fraser had also read Judt’s book, so we spent a few minutes discussing it, praising Judt for his writing and devotion in the face of Lou Gehrig’s disease. Little did Fraser or I know that, only the day before, Tony Judt had passed away, finally succumbing to ALS.

Earlier this year — during another Postwar break — I read Judt’s Ill Fares The Land. I mentioned this too; Fraser, who had also read it, called it Judt’s cri de couer, as surely it was: his frustration at the deliberate dismantling in the U.S. and UK of the social safety nets set up in the wake of the second World War, and his plea for their rescue from further attack. The book did not specifically target Canada, but as John Geddes wrote today on the Maclean’s blog, “the questions [Judt] raised should trouble citizens in any rich Western nation.”

I highly recommend reading Ill Fares The Land and, if you’re up for it, Postwar. Also, The Guardian has a fine obituary (if there can be such a thing) and his four-year-old piece in the London Review of Books entitled “The Strange Death Of Liberal America” — including a glancing shot at one Michael Ignatieff — is not to be missed.

R.I.P., Mr. Judt.