Laurent Binet, HHhH **** 1/2

HHhH is a historical novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, founder of the Nazi SS and mastermind of the Final Solution. It charts Heydrich's rise and describes the Operation Anthropoid that led to his killing at the hands of two Czechoslovakian agents. The author also documents his struggles in writing the book, trying not to go beyond the known facts.

So, basically, the film [Patton] is about a fictional character whose life is strongly inspired by Patton's, but who clearly isn't him... Everybody finds it normal, fudging reality to make a screenplay more dramatic.

Has there ever been a biographer who did not dream of writing, "Jesus of Nazareth used to lift his left eyebrow when he was thinking"?

What Binet reveals, though, is how our understanding of any story necessarily depends on embellishing the historical record. Both the author and the reader contribute to the embellishment. For example, Binet  knows the difference between Czechs and Slovaks because of tennis. "Ivan Lendl was Czech while Miroslav Mečíř was Slovak." His sense of their playing styles informs his impression of the character of the two assassins. (He later knows one of the smaller Czech towns because the hockey goalie Dominik Hašek is from there.) He imagines the creaking of the tram outside of Jozef Gabčík's room because he has spent time in Prague.

In addition, the author inevitably shapes the story into a narrative by choosing what information to include. 

I can't tell this story the way it should be told. This whole hotchpotch of characters, events, dates, and the infinite branching of cause and effect—and these people, these real people who actually existed. I'm barely able to mention a tiny fragment of their lives, their actions, their thoughts.

Binet regularly equivocates over whether to include particular incidents, based on whether they are relevant or well-attested. Meanwhile, he quietly includes true facts that provide verisimilitude:

The Sten was concealed in a bag that Gabčík had filled with dry grass... If the police checked him, how would he explain the fact that he was walking around town with a bag full of hay? Well, actually, that's easy: all he'd have to say is that it's for the rabbit. In those days, many Czechs bred rabbits at home in order to improve their daily diet, and fed them on grass taken from the city's parks.

No matter how much we know about a person or event, we still need to apply our experiences and assumptions to make it into a compelling narrative.

Despite its dark subject matter and postmodern trappings, HHhH was entertaining and informative.

Marcus Willaschek, Kant: A Revolution in Thinking ****

I knew Immanuel Kant as "the most important philosopher of the modern era" based on his work in metaphysics (Critique of Pure Reason) and ethics (the categorical imperative). Kant: A Revolution in Thinking gave me a more complete picture of Kant, both as a person and as a thinker. I learned, for example, that more than half of Kant's published works are about natural science!

The book has a unique organization, one that is thematic rather than chronological. Willaschek starts with Kant's less well-known ideas regarding politics and history and gradually works his way toward the more abstruse metaphysics. Each chapter includes information about Kant's ideas, his life, and the contemporary context.

I was concerned when reading the first few chapters. They felt like a disorganized collection of thoughts that didn't support Kant's reputation, and the language sounded like overly literal translations from the German. As I continued, it became clear that each section was like a puzzle piece, and the big picture came into focus once I had more of the pieces in place.

Willaschek identifies three important aspects of Kant's genius.

• He found ways to reconcile seemingly contradictory positions, such as idealism/epiricism and determinism/free will
• He shifted the focus of debate about objectivity and epistemology so that it takes seriously the nature and limitations of human understanding
• He approached natural science and moral reasoning in the same way.

Sarah Bakewell, The English Dane *** 1/2

The English Dane tells the true story of Jorgen Jorgenson, a 19th-century man whose adventures intersected with some of the major currents of the times. He commanded a ship in the Napoleonic wars, helped establish the British colony in Tasmania, attracted powerful British patrons, ruled Iceland after participating in a coup, spent time in debtor's prison, got transported back to Tasmania as a convict, played a notable role in the Aboriginal clearances, and was a prolific writer on a wide range of subjects. Jorgenson was a charming man of great talents who invariably undermined himself through impulsiveness. When he lacked a clear purpose, he descended into drunken dereliction.

Jorgenson is a rich complicated character whose exploits introduce us to fascinating historical events, and Sarah Bakewell can write compelling biographies. However, this book lacks je ne sais quoi. It reads like a recitation of events, somehow missing the inherent drama. I found myself thinking "how interesting" while simultaneously pondering how to make it more gripping.

Nicholas Monsarrat, The Cruel Sea *****

The Cruel Sea is one of my all-time favorite books. It follows the crew of the corvette Compass Rose as they provide protection for merchant ship convoys during the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II. It's an impossible job, fighting against the elements and the ever-increasing threat from U-Boats.

The story rarely strays from the crew's point of view, but Monsarrat manages to include a sense of the strategic development of the conflict by filtering it through their eyes. The prose style is generally earnest and matter-of-fact, which actually enhances the emotional impact. As a war novel, it's got plenty of adventure, quiet heroism, gnarly injuries, and sudden death.

The final third of the book flags compared to the rest. Our heroes move to a larger ship where they can't possibly know their crew mates as intimately, and the business of escorting conveys settles into something like routine. The tide of the war turns in their favor. ("If I were writing the story of this contest, this is where the book would tail off, because we've reached the moment where nothing happens—we're just winning the war, and that's all there is to say.")

This one gets my highest recommendation. No fancy literary technique, just good old-fashioned immersive adventure, with some history to boot.

Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware or Illumination ****

I stand by my original review for this forgotten classic, although I shaved a half star from its rating. Rereading (and re-enjoying) it, I realized how many of my favorite books deal with character development rather than plot development. The plot of The Damnation of Theron Ware serves to lead us through his intellectual progress; it doesn't have any suspense or narrative interest beyond that.

Two shortcomings lead me to reduce my original rating.

• Theron has a reputation as a fine orator, and this skill is important to the story. However, the author does not include examples of his sermons despite a few obvious opportunities to quote them.
  
  
• The book carefully charts Theron's intellectual engagement with the progressive ideas that lead to his damnation or illumination. By comparison, his shifting attitude toward his wife is woefully underdeveloped and felt too abrupt.

Aea Varfis-van Warmelo, Attention-Seeking Behavior ****

Attention-Seeking Behavior validates the continued value of browsing in bookstores. I'd never heard of this novel or its unlikely-sounding author before I came across it on the "New in Paperback" table. Nor do I know Anna Dorn, who wrote the blurb that sold me on the book: "I live for a protagonist who's both extremely self-aware and incredibly deluded, and Aea Varfis-van Warmelo nails that delightfully unnerving combo."

The narrator is a self-admitted pathological liar who takes an analytical approach to justifying her unreliability. She has fallen for a man she calls Normal Ben, who appears to be earnest and comfortable in his own skin. She starts to wonder how she can unravel the web of lies she has told him about who she is, to perhaps achieve a true intimacy.

The first half of Attention-Seeking Behavior is full five-star awesome. The couple's conversations are clever and funny, and the narrator has real insight into her motivations (mostly related to control).

I liked the process of getting to know new people, especially people I disliked on principle because of their jobs, politics, or taste, so I could understand a psychological framework that seemed foreign to mine, but I mostly liked the process of becoming known to new people and practicing different parts of my personality—displaying the worst parts and seeing how far I could go until they pulled back.

She also discusses the history of lie-detecting techniques as a way of complicating the question of what constitutes a justified lie.

I found Part Two a bit less effective. The fundamental problem is a lack of plot development. Aea researches an incident of workplace sexual misconduct that may or may not shed light on her own past. The story only returns to its emotional core (the relationship with Normal Ben) at the end. 

David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas ****

In anticipation of our upcoming cruise through the Panama Canal, I read this award-winning popular history of its construction. 

The book is exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting), covering the initial French attempt, the geopolitical intrigue, and the sociology in addition to the engineering. Construction doesn't start in earnest until page 500 of the 617-page book, and technical details occupy only the final chapter. In other words, McCullough focuses on the human side of the story.

Despite its comprehensiveness, there were still subjects I wish I'd learned more about.

• The first third of the book details the French attempt to build a canal across Panama and the resulting human and financial disasters. During the same time period (roughly 1870 - 1890), the Americans set out to build a canal across Nicaragua, but all we learn is that "it had been an underfinanced affair that collapsed with the Wall Street Panic of 1893."
  
  
• Ferdinand de Lesseps, the mastermind of the French canal, had to convince the Americans that his canal did not violate the Monroe Doctrine. What were his arguments? How skeptical was the America government?
  
  
• McCullough emphasizes the monumental scale of the problems the canal builders needed to solve, both technically and logistically. He also notes that many key decisions were still in debate as last as 1910 (including the fundamental one: sea-level canal or locks?) He then describes the impressive, unprecedented results. How did they manage it? Most of the planning and problem-solving takes place offstage.

Undoubtedly having read this book will enhance my experience when we travel through the canal. I will know what to look for and marvel at.

The Path Between the Seas is the first book I've read by David McCullough. I found his writing style to be a tad more academic than I expected from a popular historian. The story he has to tell is inherently dramatic and he organizes it well, but the prose often lacks the immediacy that would make the scenes come to life. McCullough's sentences tend to be too long and to eschew the simple past tense; in other words, he needs to follow my writing guidelines for accentuating the transitive (email me for details!). A brief example, chosen at random:

Phillippe Bunau-Varilla had gone directly from Hay's house to the station, had taken the next train to New York, and during the stop at Baltimore had sent a telegram...

This sentence would be so much more dynamic in the simple past tense: "Phillippe Bunau-Varilla went directly from Hay's house to the station, took the next train to New York, and during the stop at Baltimore sent a telegram..."