The Spanish Civil War

I was recommended this work by a poster on a baseball forum, which I suppose is as good a place as any to get history recommendations. Recognized (not just by baseball enthusiasts!) as a comprehensive place to begin study of the Spanish Civil War, it's long(ish), detailed, heavily footnoted, with an extensive bibliography, and revised several times (most recently in 2011) to ensure that it reflects the most up-to-date scholarship on the subject.

Am I enough of an expert on the Spanish Civil War that I can say whether or not this is the best introductory work on the subject? No, of course not. Thomas doesn't trip my bullshit detector, for the most part (which is worth something in a conflict that still arouses strong feelings among late era partisans), and he generally does try to puncture some of the myths told about the conflict. Where he does appear to get a lot of criticism is for glossing over the Spanish Revolution (the anarchist movement in Catalonia, among other places), but I feel he covers this in a decent amount of detail. (Although I will reserve further judgment until I've read some more).

I'd recommend this, potentially to another reader on a baseball forum.

Miscellania

Read while my access to the blog was limited:

Luigi Pirandello's Short Stories Link
Roberto Bolaño's The Return and The Insufferable Gaucho Link and link
Murray Kempton's Part of Our Time Link
Daniel Okrent's The Rise and Fall of Prohibition Link
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground Link

Pirandello is a noted short story master, and here's only a small selection. I found these a bit uneven -- there's four sections: "Sicilian Tales", "Tales of Humor and Irony", "Tales of Frustration", and "Tales of Anguish and Hope". I found the first two sections had the stories that were most to my liking (particularly "Sicilian Tales), and the latter two were pretty poor, in my opinion. "The Umbrella" is a particularly bad offender here. Many of the latter stories were very cloying.

Bolaño's two short story collections here are both excellent; The Return is a bit more conventional, while The Insufferable Gaucho features several slightly longer pieces. Standout works in The Return include "Joanna Silvestri" about a South American porn star spending time with John Holmes before his death, "The Prefiguration of Lalo Cura", about tracking down a forgotten porn actor, and "The Return", which although is not about pornography, is about necrophilia. The Insufferable Gaucho has "Police Rat" which seems to take place in one of Kafka's universes, and "Alvaro Rousselot's Journey", about an author confronting a foreign filmmaker who adapts his works without credit. This isn't too different from the other works of Bolaño's that I have read, and that's not a bad thing.

Part of Our Time is a book I had had to buy for a class some years ago. It was out of print, but I was able to easily find it on Amazon. It's back in print these days, which is a fantastic thing -- this is an even-handed, non-hysterical look at what drew several men (and women) to unions, to socialism, to communism. Published in 1955 (!!!) it's a fascinating look back at the conditions of the thirties, and how these workingmen responded to them. Kempton covers some familiar names (Alger Hiss, Paul Robeson), and some unfamiliar ones (Joe Curran, J.B. Matthews). This is an extremely frank and thoughtful work, which has made me want to seek out other pieces of Kempton's, as well as wonder about the Red Scare in general -- I was under the impression that work of this tenor wasn't done on anything remotely Left during that time period.

Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition is, like the previous, a fascinating look at a period of history I had been unfamiliar with. It's a little less academic than Kempton's work, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Unfortunately, unlike Kempton, who breaks up each narrative into a separate chapter, Okrent moves chronologically, which is probably the most logical way to cover the period, but can lead to leaping back and forth. Still, it's a great look at a period in American history that I've often seen skipped over. One memorable moment is a quote from Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas: "There's as much chance of repealing the 18th Amendment as there is for a humming bird to fly to Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail."

Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground is very short, but not quite an easy read. Unfortunately, as the translator's foreword notes, the only text we have had been significantly edited in order to be initially published, and Dostoevsky chose to keep the edits in subsequent printings. An introspective rant, written as a polemic against mid-nineteenth century Russian intellectuals, this is significantly less intimidating than some of Dostoevsky's longer novels, and has inspired me to pick one of them up soon.

Homage to Catalonia/Down and Out in Paris and London

In Homage to Catalonia, it's easy to see the ideas behind both Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four taking shape. Orwell's experiences in the militia fighting against Franco's coup are similar to Michael Shaara's sketches of Gettysburg in The Killer Angels, in that they're an inset, rather than the complete picture. (Of course, this is significantly more forgiveable in Orwell's case, since he's writing about his experiences, rather than about the scope of the coup and the subsequent war)

If I wasn't aware of the history, I would think that the final third of this book was embellished -- street battles between members of the same side during a civil war? I've seen it argued that the Soviet Union's assistance hurt the Left in Spain more than it helped, and after reading this, it's certainly a perspective I have to take seriously.

Overall, this is a fascinating work, both from its perspective on soldiering in an unfamiliar land, as well as Orwell's analysis of the political situation (which, until the end, he keeps in separate chapters, which is a nice touch if one wants to focus on one or the other). What is obvious to us over sixty years later (that the USSR's purpose in Spain was to advance its own foreign policy, rather than necessarily to help the Republicans) was tragically not so during the war, much to the detriment of the dead.

The second work in this book, Down and Out in Paris and London, shows Orwell's socialism in if not quite an inchoate form, at least not at its final stage of development. The descriptions of the lives of poverty led by waitstaff, tramps, and residents of cheap hotels are real, but the feeling is similar to Pulp's "Common People":

cos when you're laid in bed at night,
watching roaches climb the wall,
if you call your Dad he could stop it all

In short, that Orwell is living like this to have a taste of the life, not because he has no alternatives. This is illustrated when, fed up with working fifteen hour days underground as a "plongeur" (a dishwasher/errand boy), he writes a friend in London, who is able to get him a job quickly, so Orwell is able to leave his (miserable, but not untypical) fifteen hour workday.

The second portion of Down and Out in Paris and London is along the same lines -- when Orwell arrives in London, and is informed that his position will not be ready for a month, he decides to spend the time slumming, sleeping in workhouses and public dormitories. Here, the conditions are truly appalling, and Orwell does meet some fascinating characters. However, he does occasionally slip into lecturing, but that can be forgiven in such a young (at the time) author.

Clearly, Down and Out in Paris in London is no longer quite relevant -- not because no one in major Western cities lives or works in poor conditions, but because the conditions described here no longer exist. It is a worthwhile document of a bygone time, and it's worthwhile to see a young Orwell's ideas taking shape. Homage to Catalonia is, in my opinion, the more significant and interesting work here.