Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson, a review

Themistocles, Alexander the Great, Cortes, and the British and American officers of the last two centuries enjoyed innate advantages that over the long duration could offset the terrible effects of imbecilic generalship, flawed tactics, strained supply lines, difficult terrain, and inferior numbers—or a simple “bad day.” These advantages were immediate and entirely cultural, and they were not the product of the genes, germs, or geography of a distant past.

--Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture

Carnage and Culture (2001) serves as a corrective in some ways to Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. Military success is not just about east-west vs. north-south axes and favorable climates for growing crops, Hanson argues, but about cultures that value individual initiative in conjunction with discipline, and whose armies and soldiers take to the battlefield because of personal choice or the decision of an elected official. As units comprised of free individuals Western armies are invested in conflicts differently than their eastern counterparts.

Hanson says that Western armies discuss and vote on strategy before battle, have the initiative and flexibility to make changes during the heat of the fighting, and audit the performance of their military and non-military leadership afterwards. This cultural mindset makes for a better individual soldier and a more cohesive unit, one that fights in close ranks (the Macedonian Phalanx, British squares, and so on) and prefers open, head-on combat of annihilation (“shock battle” is one of Hanson’s favorite terms). The historical result is a track record of victories over lesser-motivated, more inflexible, and lighter-armored foes, even when outnumbered, such as Alexanders's rout of the Persians at the battle of Gaugamela, for example. In nearly all the major engagements in which west triumphed over east, “the same paradigms of freedom, decisive shock battle, civic militarism, technology, capitalism, individualism, and civilian audit and open dissent loom large,” Hansen writes.

Technology has certainly played a role in the military supremacy of western forces, too. Because free inquiry and rationalism are Western trademarks, European armies have been traditionally been equipped with better arms and armor, Hanson adds. But technology alone cannot account for this long track record of victory: “Themistocles’ triremes at Salamis were no better than Xerxes’, and Admiral Nagumo’s carriers at Midway had better planes than the American’s did,” Hanson explains.

Les Miserables--wow

It's funny how you can reach a point in your life when you think you can no longer be surprised by art, that you've experienced the depth and breath of music, painting, or literature, and art begins to seem a series of minor disappointments, a recombination of existing works, or pale imitation.

While I never quite reached those depths, I flirted with the feeling. I'm glad to report that Les Miserables woke me up out of my doldrums and made me feel a fool.

This past Christmas I got my wife and I a pair of tickets to a March 31 showing at the Opera House in Boston. I had not listened to any of the music of Les Miserables previously and I scarcely knew the storyline, save for the barest outline. I had planned to listen to some of the songs beforehand but never got around to it, and by the time Saturday rolled around I thought, "screw it, too late. I'm sure it will be a good show anyway."

I was wrong. It was great. I was not prepared for the emotion of the show, the soaring voices, nor the frank depiction of religious material. Not knowing what to expect--a rare experience in this age of the internet and instant communication and gratification--and having my expectations greatly surpassed made it all the better.

"Stars" was when I knew this show was something special. It was not sung by this gentleman, Philip Quast, but the actor who played Javert at the Opera House on Saturday looked and sounded much like him.

All in all a memorable night out on the town. Les Miserables is art at its peak. I am so glad I got to see it.

I guess one can like heavy metal and show tunes. Go figure.

Metal Friday: "Valkyries" by Blind Guardian

In an effort to get more heavy metal on this blog--because why would anyone possibly want less metal--I'm hereby starting a "Metal Friday" feature. This will consist of Youtube clips of some of my favorite songs, sometimes with commentary when the Muse strikes me.

Today, "Valkyries" by Blind Guardian, from the album At the Edge of Time. It's a magnificent lyrical/aural evocation of  those mythical choosers of the slain, bearing the bravest with them on their ride to Valhalla. Turn it up loud:

    

Rain
Red blood keeps pouring down
Come Valkyries, join me on that final ride

Here I lie bleeding
Odin, I await thee

The battle rages on

Seven Princes by John R. Fultz, a Review

What do you want out of your fantasy? Mythmaking in the mold of JRR Tolkien’s The Silmarillion? Freebooting adventure, decaying civilizations, and heroic swordplay a-la Robert E. Howard? Weird, extraplanar demonic horrors like those encountered in the fiction of HP Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith? You get all of this stuff in John Fultz’ gonzo debut novel Seven Princes, both to our benefit and occasionally our detriment.

Seven Princes is bold, brash, and big. This is a novel written with bright strokes of character and setting, bursting with world-shaking adventure, intrigue, and conflict. It reads big, and feels big, and it’s unrepentantly so. In a “Meet the Author” Q&A at the back of the book Fultz describes the influences and raw materials that underlie Seven Princes. These are legion—Lord Dunsany, Howard, Lovecraft, Smith, Tolkien, Tanith Lee, Darrell Schweitzer, and others—so it’s no surprise Seven Princes contains multitudes. But underneath it all is a strong epic fantasy undercurrent, shot through with swords and sorcery. Says Fultz:

A writer’s sensibility is, I think, determined largely by his or her influences… what you’ve read most and where your passions lie. You write what you love. That said, writers like to stretch themselves too. For me, the whole epic/heroic fantasy realm is where I’ve been heading since I began reading fantasy as a kid in the late 1970s. Some have also called my work “sword and sorcery” but nobody can give a solid definition of what that actually is. For me, the bottom line is that I just Do My Thing and let my passion for storytelling lead me where I need to go.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

A dalliance in murder ... Donald Westlake's The Hook

I recently agreed to review the audio book of Donald Westlake's The Hook for SFFaudio.com. It's a mystery/suspense novel, I believe the first I've ever read. The Hook was fun and Westlake is a good writer, though my opinion of it was not enough to prompt a rash of mystery titles reviewed here. But it's good to read outside your preferred genre and see how the other half lives from time to time.

Some thoughts upon reading John Gardner’s Grendel

I’m troubled, deeply troubled, by the extremes of existentialist, postmodern thought. The kind that gets put under the microscope in John Gardner’s fine little 1971 novel Grendel.

If the Dragon is right, Grendel cannot be morally condemned, and his actions are no better or worse than Beowulf’s, or anyone else’s. They are, like everything else, absolutely meaningless. The Dragon is the real horror of Grendel—a beast that adheres to hard, cold materialism. “It’s all the same in the end, matter and motion, simple or complex. No difference, finally. Death, transfiguration. Ashes to ashes and slime to slime, amen,” says the Dragon to Grendel. Nothingness awaits us at the end. The dragon’s speech is like Morgoth’s to Hurin; negating meaning, negating the possibility of a benevolent God, negating even an uncaring but eternal creative force in the universe. Certainly negating an afterlife or any possibility of escape.

Compare the conversation of Hurin/Morgoth in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Children of Hurin:

“Beyond the Circles of the World you shall not pursue those who refuse you.”

“Beyond the Circles of the World I will not pursue them,” said Morgoth. “For beyond the Circles of the World there is Nothing. But within them they shall not escape me, until they enter into Nothing.”

…to Grendel/the Dragon:

“Nevertheless, something will come of all this,” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “A brief pulsation in the black hole of eternity.”

We are just a cog in the wheel, part of the mindless machine. The Dragon recommends coping with this state by hoarding wealth and sitting upon it.

Postmodern thought of this sort has no clothes; we need a moral compass.

25 years of Evil Dead 2? Groovy.

Wow, has it really been 25 years since Evil Dead 2 came out? Guess it's time to break out the VCR (yes, I still own one. And lots of VCR tapes. Get offa my lawn) and do a rewatch.

If you're a fan of the film I recommend reading the linked article above. Evil Dead 2 is much better than the original, and I think it's better than Army of Darkness. The latter is a great film, too, and perhaps a bigger cult favorite with its higher memorable quote quotient, but this bit from the article sums up why I prefer Dead by Dawn over AoD (by a hair):

Army of Darkness has more than its share of fanatics, given that it provided many with their access point to the Evil Dead universe, but for me it’s never quite measured up to its predecessors. By taking the action out of the cabin and into a much larger-scale, higher-production value setting, it lacks that DIY charm, and the oddball humour sits awkwardly with the concessions made to a fairly standard studio blockbuster format; it doesn’t help that the horror elements are significantly pared back. Worse still is how Ash’s characterisation changes between the films. Far from the witless but well-meaning would-be tough guy of Evil Dead 2, in Army of Darkness he’s a mean-spirited, arrogant bastard with whom it’s very hard to empathise. Sure, Army of Darkness provides Ash with many of his most celebrated one-liners – the immortal “Gimme some sugar, baby,” and “This is my boom-stick!” amongst others – but none of them quite measure up to that single, immortal word that is evoked for the first time in Evil Dead 2… “Groovy.” 

For further reading, my own take on how I discovered the greatness of Evil Dead 2. Just like the writer of the article above I was hooked after the possessed hand sequence. My favorite part: When Ash slams a bucket over his sawed off appendage, then weights it down with a copy of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Just indescribably awesome.