Giant hydro-elec­tric dams are not exact­ly a pop­u­lar sub­ject, these days, but, eco­log­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions aside, the build­ing of Man­ic 5 cer­tainly pro­vides a heavy dose of awe and romance. Few tourists take the trou­ble to jour­ney into the remote dis­trict in North­ern Que­bec where this huge struc­ture is. It’s not just the gigan­tic sta­tis­tics (even the 735,000-volt trans­mis­sion lines were an engi­neer­ing achieve­ment on an unprece­dented scale), but the human dra­ma of its con­struc­tion. The authors cap­ture this in both prose and about a hun­dred beau­ti­ful draw­ings. Lili Réthi, who looked some­thing like Miss Marple, was one of the great­est archi­tec­tural and engi­neer­ing artists, and she died short­ly after com­plet­ing the Man­ic 5 draw­ings. Her work, which is of great artis­tic val­ue in my view, is known only to archi­tects and engineers.

The reser­voir cre­ated by Man­ic 5 is even more inter­est­ing than the dam. Any­one who has spent any time in Earth orbit is quite famil­iar with it, since it stands out like a bull’s‑eye, seen from space. The project flood­ed the impact crater cre­ated by a five km wide aster­oid that struck Que­bec towards the end of the Tri­as­sic. The Man­i­coua­gan lake acts as a giant hydraulic bat­tery for Hydro-Que­bec. In the peak peri­od of the win­ter cold, the tur­bines are run all the time at peak load to meet the mas­sive elec­tri­cal heat­ing needs of the province. Dur­ing the sum­mer, the sur­plus is sold to the New Eng­land grid. The island inside the lake is larg­er than Rhode Island. Some of the lakes with­in the island with­in the lake have large islands in them. As far as I know, there are no inhabitants.

The Mabino­gion is a com­pi­la­tion of Welsh leg­end that we know from two medieval man­u­scripts, the Llyfr Gwyn Rhy­d­derch (White Book of Rhy­d­derch) and the Llyfr Coch Hergest (Red Book of Hergest). J. R. R. Tolkien was expert in these sources, and it’s not sur­pris­ing that there are echoes of the Mabino­gion in the Lord of the Rings. Evan­ge­line Wal­ton worked more direct­ly with the Welsh mate­r­ial. Prince of Annwn is pret­ty much a retelling of the first tale, “Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed”. She attempts to strike a bal­ance between the orig­i­nal myth­ic style of sto­ry-telling and mod­ern nov­el­is­tic tech­niques. The result is very sat­is­fy­ing. It doesn’t feel “mod­ern”, but it sat­is­fies the mod­ern taste for nar­ra­tive sur­prise and dra­ma. Her vocab­u­lary and phras­ing are well cho­sen: she uses an “ele­vated”, poet­ic prose with­out sound­ing sil­ly, a very dif­fi­cult trick indeed.

I’ve read two dif­fer­ent trans­la­tions of the Mabino­gion (the Ganz and the Jones & Jones ver­sions), so I’m not sure how it comes across to some­one who has nev­er known the mythol­ogy. Wal­ton stays rea­son­ably close to the orig­i­nal, though she throws in a few unre­lated bits from the Irish epics for dra­matic pur­poses. Welsh mythol­ogy is as misty and dis­con­cert­ing as the Welsh land­scape: you can nev­er tell what is sup­posed to be real or dream, nat­ural or super­nat­ural. I spent a week walk­ing through the Welsh moun­tains, and I’m still not sure what actu­al­ly hap­pened to me and what I halu­ci­nat­ed. Walton’s fan­tasy cap­tures that feeling.

The last pub­lic hang­ing in the U.S., in Owens­boro, Ken­tucky on June 7, 1936

David Row is a defense lawyer in Texas, the Amer­i­can State where the death penalty’s injus­tice and bar­barism are most glar­ingly evi­dent. The pic­ture of Texas “jus­tice” that he draws makes it clear that there is no more of a judi­cial sys­tem there than in any sleazy Com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship. Since 1996, the Con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment has launched a suc­cess­ful assault on the most fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of com­mon law and lib­erty. Row is work­ing from with­in the sys­tem, and with­in his soci­ety, so his approach to the sub­ject seems rather timid to an out­sider. In his uni­verse, he is fight­ing an uphill bat­tle, like a doc­tor try­ing to con­vince a prim­i­tive tribe that dis­ease is caused by germs, not witch’s curs­es. For that is the real sit­u­a­tion. Eighty per­cent of Amer­i­cans are enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­ers of the death penal­ty, not because of any rea­son­ed analy­sis, but because they are igno­rant sav­ages. They do it for the same rea­son that Aztecs ripped the hearts out of sac­ri­fi­cial vic­tims and the Tal­iban exe­cuted women in foot­ball fields. It is in that kind of social envi­ron­ment that the Con­ser­v­a­tive agen­da of destroy­ing free­dom and civ­i­liza­tion can run ram­pant. To some­one who lives out­side this back­ward world (and out­side the ram­page of crime and sense­less mur­ders that it per­pet­u­ates), it is just embarrass­ing to read a book that shouldn’t have to be written.

Gwynne Dyer is a Cana­dian jour­nal­ist (now based in the U.K.), and an expert on mil­i­tary sub­jects, who has had a glob­ally syn­di­cated col­umn for many years. I don’t always agree with him, but he is com­pe­tent, writes hon­estly, and doesn’t pre­var­i­cate. He’s gen­er­ally a voice of com­mon sense. Unfor­tu­nately, for the last decade, his col­umn hasn’t appeared in very many Cana­dian news­pa­pers. The major­ity of big Cana­dian papers have been under the con­trol of the malig­nant press bar­on, Con­rad Black, and his suc­ces­sor, in recent years. Dyer is per­sona non gra­ta. This book con­tains a selec­tion of the columns that most of us, here in his native land, have missed.

Dyer’s strong point is that, unlike most jour­nal­ists, he knows how the mil­i­tary works, how deci­sions get made in it, and what war real­ly involves. He also knows some­thing about the cul­ture and his­tory of the world in gen­eral. This puts him way ahead of most jour­nal­ists. He is weak­er when try­ing to sec­ond-guess the motives of politi­cians and the oli­garchs who wield real pow­er, a weak­ness which he very hon­estly admits. He calls atten­tion to the columns where he didn’t hit the mark. Read more »

I spot­ted this in a Good­will book-bin and snatched it. What a lit­tle trea­sure to come across! In 1931, the young com­mer­cial artist Theodore Seuss Geisel, who had already assumed the non-de-plume of “Dr. Seuss”, was com­mis­sioned to il­lus­trate three col­lec­tions of amus­ing quotes from school essays. His biog­ra­phy states that it was this that con­vinced him that he should try mak­ing a book for chil­dren. Dr. Seuss’ inim­itable style is already evi­dent in these illus­tra­tions. The school­boy bloop­ers select­ed are still very fun­ny. Some exam­ples: “Grav­ity was dis­cov­ered by Isaac Wal­ton. It is chiefly notice­able in the autumn, when apples are falling off trees”, “The Zodi­ac is the Zoo of the Sky, where lions, goats, vir­gins and oth­er ani­mals go after they are dead”, “A cow is very like a bull, but a bull hurts more”, “To stop a nose­bleed, stand on your head till your heart stops beat­ing.”, “The arti­choke was an ancient instru­ment of tor­ture”, “Hered­ity means that if your grand­fa­ther didn’t have any chil­dren, then your father prob­a­bly wouldn’t have had any, and nei­ther would you, prob­a­bly.”, “Thomas Paine was a rare indi­vid­ual, obsessed by com­mon sense.”, “Cana­di­ans raise bowl wee­vils for their wool.”, and who could for­get “Socrates was addict­ed to hem­lock, which even­tu­ally cor­rupted his morals.”? Dr. Seuss’s draw­ings do full jus­tice to these gems of error. I don’t doubt that this book is col­lectible, but it would take a gang of furi­ous Scots­men armed with clay­mores to pry it away from me. [appar­ently it isn’t worth any­thing much — a friend checked up on it] Read more »

14612. (Michael Cun­ning­ham) A Home at the End of the World
14613. (Ian Rankin) Strip Jack
14614. (Kim Stan­ley Robin­son) Fifty Degrees Below Zero
14615. (Dean Mahomet) The Trav­els of Dean Mahomet, An Eigh­teenth-Cen­tu­ry Journey 
. . . . . Through India [ed. with an intruc­tion and bio­graph­i­cal essay by Michael H. Fisher]
14616. (Tim Wynne-Jones) A Thief in the House of Memory
14617. (Allen F. Davis) Spear­heads For Reform ― The Social Set­tle­ments and the Progressive
. . . . . Move­ment 1890–1914
Read more »

Tim Wynne-Jones lives in the pic­turesque town of Perth, Ontario, about an hour’s dri­ve from Ottawa. A small-town Cana­dian sen­si­bil­ity is the frame­work for this nov­el, writ­ten for teenagers, but it is not the nos­tal­gia of Leacock’s Sun­shine Sketech­es by a long­shot. It is clos­er to the haunt­ed past and stiffled hopes in Sher­wood Anderson’s Wines­burg Ohio. A Thief in the House of Mer­mory is beau­ti­fully writ­ten. The prose style is exquis­ite, full of inven­tion and word­play, and the dia­log feels true. Despite the dis­turb­ing and depress­ing sub­ject mat­ter, the book is not just the prod­uct of facile cyn­i­cism. It is about con­fronting the past and deal­ing with it, and the deci­sion to know the truth even if it brings you pain. Wynne-Jones is clear­ly writ­ing intel­li­gent, mov­ing, and tech­ni­cally superb fic­tion for the “young adult” mar­ket, and the Toron­to pub­lisher Dou­glas & McIn­tyre is not putting obsta­cles in his way. I will eager­ly inves­ti­gate his oth­er books, and the publisher.

This is a fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ment. Dean Mahomet came from a mod­estly suc­cess­ful Mus­lim fam­ily in India in the 18th Cen­tury, just at the peri­od when the East India Com­pany was absorb­ing and tak­ing over the crum­bling Mughal Empire. At the age of eleven, he became the friend and con­fi­dant of a teenage British offi­cer, and for the next six­teen years they advanced togeth­er in that curi­ous enti­ty, the Indi­an Army. Togeth­er, they saw action at the siege of Gwalior, the Great Mutiny, and oth­er key events. When a sud­den (though appar­ently unde­served) dis­grace end­ed his friend’s career, D.M. chose to accom­pany him to his native Ire­land. He seems to have been per­son­ally charm­ing, and was thor­oughly self-edu­cat­ed in the lit­er­ary cul­ture of England.

In Cork, Ire­land, he mar­ried into the local Anglo-Irish gen­try. He wrote and pub­lished his book, which is an account of his mil­i­tary career, with an empha­sis on describ­ing the sights and cus­toms of the regions in North­ern India that he tra­versed. It must be remem­bered that, for him, most places in India were just as “for­eign” as Bel­gium or Den­mark would be to an Eng­lish­man. The descrip­tion of a famine is par­tic­u­larly engross­ing. Read more »

Kim Stan­ley Robin­son is always read­able, though the nar­ra­tive often stops dead so that the read­er can be sup­plied with large quan­ti­ties of sci­en­tific, his­tor­i­cal, or polit­i­cal infor­ma­tion. It’s to Robinson’s cred­it that he can pull off these dis­qui­si­tions with­out los­ing the read­er. But it makes his nov­els a bit emo­tion­ally cool. This is Robinson’s Glob­al Warm­ing nov­el. It begins, inter­est­ingly, with the city of Wash­ing­ton rav­aged by a dev­as­tat­ing flood. The descrip­tion of the clum­sy and inad­e­quate response is won­der­fully pre­scient — the book was released only months before the New Orleans flood, and must have been writ­ten in 2004. The book didn’t strike ter­ror into my heart, as was intend­ed, since the sci­ence fic­tional premise is that the Unit­ed States is sud­denly forced to have Canada’s cli­mate. I’ve been out­doors in fifty-below zero weath­er numer­ous times, and, while a brac­ing expe­ri­ence, the phrase “fifty below” doesn’t have quite the same scare val­ue for me that it does for a Californian.