Just Finished Reading Poland by James A. Michener

Poland, by James A. Michener, is the third novel I've read by this late prolific author of forty.  A reflective historical look at this important eastern European country's past from the vantage point of three fictional families sharply divided by class, it was published in 1983, a little more than a year after that Eastern Bloc nation declared martial law and severely curtailed its people's freedoms.  By decade's end, though, communist rule would be overthrown and, following free elections in 1989, a capitalism system was instituted.  Michener's story goes up to and hints at the coup d'état in December, 1981 that put an abrupt end to liberalization in that society without covering it...since he would live on to 1997, I wonder what he thought about the subsequent fall of communism and the Soviet Union.  The novel itself spans nearly 800 years as it describes a stagnant social system in Poland of powerful landowning nobles called "magnates", lesser landowners called "gentry", and the peasants, comprising the vast majority of Poles and who for all practical purposes were the property and slaves of the magnates and gentry.  This grossly inequitable system would last into the last century when two cataclysmic world wars would forever uproot and transform their society...

If there are two important themes winding through this generally chronologically-presented novel, they are that (1) Poland was a land, without the benefit of natural barriers, that was constantly either under the threat of attack and occupation by outside forces or in the state of occupation by them, and (2) the magnates...and to a lesser degree the gentry...fiercely held onto their stranglehold on Polish society while always believing themselves to be enlightened, free, and democratic.  In the early centuries, as Michener laid it out, these ruling families demonstrated great patriotism and courage in the defense of their homeland from invaders.  But when Poland began to be partitioned...and ultimately eliminated from the map for more than a century...in the late 1700s by Prussia, Austria, and Russia, these same magnate families enthusiastically adopted the banners of their new national rulers in the interests of preserving their own properties and status.  Part of the problem that made Polish governments weak was that their ruling king was always elected by the magnate-controlled legislature and that usually weak kings were selected from abroad in order to ensure that none of them would become too powerful.  The other part of the problem was the so-called "Golden Freedom" in which just one member of the elected legislature could raise an objection and cause that entire session's work to be nullified...this caused a usually broken national government which kept the magnates strong and in ultimate control...

I'm not going into any detail describing the fictional families, characters, and locales...the author did a great job with developing and presenting them, though.  As with the previous James Michener novels I've read, Space and Centennial, I had to struggle a bit trying to figure out what was real history and what was a product of his vivid imagination.  The Tatar and Teutonic Knight invasions from the 1200s and 1400s respectively, the union with Lithuania, the partition period, and the many and often desperate struggles of the last century were well-presented...especially with regard to the horrors of Nazi occupation during World War II. You'll get to know a lot about Polish history, culture (especially paintings and classical music), geography and its society...at least up to the year 1981...if you read this worthwhile book.  Well, I guess it's about time for me to look up another James A. Michener novel to start on....

Just Finished Reading All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr is an American writer whose 2014 novel All the Light We Cannot See was a big award-winning hit.  It is set mainly in France and Germany during World War II and the years just preceding it.  A French girl, Marie-Laure, develops cataracts early in childhood and is blind for life...she lives in Paris with her father, a locksmith working for the Museum of Natural History.  There is a mysterious diamond stone there, the Sea of Flames, that purports to guarantee immortality to whoever possesses it while cursing those around them.  Meanwhile, in Germany lives young Werner, a boy gifted about electronics and tinkering who, with his younger sister Jutta, grows up under the oppressive and racist rule of Hitler's Nazi regime as it militarizes and prepares for war.  He is sent to a boy's academy while Marie-Laure and her father flee Paris to coastal Saint-Malo (where her great-uncle Etienne lives) when the French capital city is occupied by the Germans in the spring of 1940.  The story goes down three paths: one, Marie-Laure's story, two, that of Werner as he eventually finds himself drawn into the war as a technician, and three, the fate of that valuable Sea of Flames as a terminally ill Nazi officer is hell-bent on finding it for himself.  I guess that's about as much as I feel comfortable saying about what happens in the book...no need to be a plot spoiler...

This is another novel exposing the horrendous conditions civilians and soldiers alike experienced in Europe during World War II.  In Hitler's totalitarian Nazi society young Werner has to choose between his own survival and compromising his values, just one example of millions of Germans forced to bear the shame of the Nazi atrocities.  Marie-Laure's father had constructed for her exact scale-model replicas of both their neighborhoods in Paris and Saint-Malo...she uses them as an aid to get around as well as understanding her environment.  I loved how she treasures her braille books, especially Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Werner and Jutta's forbidden shortwave radio listening brought back memories of when I was a kid and would listen to my own radio late at night for distant AM stations.  I thought All the Light We Cannot See was well-written and gave an empathetic, compassionate treatment of some people just struggling to endure this terrible war, both from the viewpoints of the occupied and the occupier...

Just Finished Reading The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers, by French novelist Alexandre Dumas, is one of those books that I probably should have read back in school...better late than never, I say.  Dumas published in it 1844, but this historical novel's theme goes back to the 1620s during the reign of France's Louis XIII and England's Charles I.  The two kingdoms seem to be in a perennial state of conflict, either in war or preparing for it.  The French king has a special guard unit, called the musketeers, that operates independently of other forces, and the Cardinal has his own guard that often battles that of the King's...most particularly those musketeers.  There are special musketeers, called "the inseparables", named Athos, Parthos, and Aramis...hence the book's title.  A young man from Gascony province, d'Artagnan, has arrived seeking to be accepted by the musketeers and trained into their group.  But he gets drawn into a scuffle with a mystery man and loses his father's letter to their leader.  Disappointed, d'Artagnan finds himself first accidentally drawn into duels with the three musketeers and then, united with them, fends off an attack from the Cardinal's guards...in doing so gaining the good graces of the King and resulting in his appointment to the King's guard...

The Three Musketeers is full of "honor" and dueling to the death in its defense, something I'm not very enthusiastic about.  It all seems so immature and pointless as it is near-to-impossible for one man to have a simple conversation with another without it ending in an insult and an invitation to fight it out.  While this nonsense is going on, there is intrigue between the King of France, his wife Anne (who is also Queen of Austria), the Cardinal, and Lord Buckingham of England...the most powerful man there behind King Charles.  Rochefort, the mystery man d'Artagnan earlier encountered and is always seeking for revenge, along with Milady de Winter, one of literature's greatest villainesses, work for Cardinal Richelieu while Constance Bonacieux, working for the Queen, is d'Artagnan's love interest.  The plot gets pretty convoluted, and predictably in this context of international conflict and intrigue, not all survive to the end...

There apparently really was a historical d'Artagnan as well as the three musketeers: Dumas derived much of his material from his knowledge of that era's history as well as another Frenchman's semi-fictional work from 1700.  As it turns out, The Three Musketeers was the first of a series that Alexandre Dumas wrote, and he had a collaborator with these novels: August Maquete.  Probably needless to say, I read an English translation of this work, not the French original.  Did I like this novel?  Once I got past the buffoonery with the incessant dueling, I began to enjoy the different characters as well as learning quite a bit about early 17th century European history...including an important assassination that occurred in 1628...

Just Finished Reading Vanity Fair by William Thackeray

It took me a while, but I finally finished reading English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 book Vanity Fair.  The setting is England and assorted locales in western Europe, around the time of Napoleon's campaigns and the subsequent years.  The main players are two young women...the virtuous Amelia "Emmy" Sedley and the manipulative Rebecca "Becky" Sharp...who come out of the same private boarding school and who are continually crossing paths with each other.  Emmy, whose Sedley family is initially wealthy and enjoys high social standing, has to deal with her father's business failures and their fall from grace.  Becky, on the other hand, has never had money or standing and is always scheming to obtain them from others.  Their relationships leading to marriage and maternity, as well as the interconnection between the associated Sedley, Crawley, and Osborne families, drive the story's plot...with the addition of a singular character, the most honorable William Dobbin...an awkward but courageous and compassionate young man who quickly and deeply falls in unrequited love with Emmy...

Vanity Fair comes across on different levels to me.  One is an examination of social class in England in the early nineteenth century, with the conclusion that the distinctions are largely artificial and often cruel.  Another is how men and women courted each other, with fathers often arranging marriages in order to gain or maintain the family's level of social class and wealth.  I already pretty much knew all that before I picked up Vanity Fair...I got mostly a good insight into the personal relationships between the characters, with Thackeray's flair for dialogue revealing their personalities, desires, grudges, fixations, and...yes, vanities...

I wrote a few days ago that I wasn't all that happy with this novel, and I stick to that assessment.  I was pleased, however, that while some of the characters seemed be rather stagnant over the years, others underwent substantial change in terms of their abilities to forgive and more deeply understand and appreciate the motives of others.  I guess that also runs parallel to the real world...some of us grow through living and experiencing trials and triumphs, while others never seem to "get it"...

Enjoying Watching the Tour de France

Now that there isn't a standout American like disgraced Lance Armstrong competing in the annual Tour de France, the premier bicycle racing event in the world, interest in this championship has diminished in the United States.  Ironically, I have found that not having any particular bicyclist or country to root for has made it more interesting for me, as I have discovered that participating in the Tour involves a lot more than just being in good physical condition, jumping on a good bike, and pedaling your ass off...

For one thing, entrants in the Tour de France must be on one of the allotted 22 nine-bicyclist teams, making a total of 198.  Each team carries the banner of a country, but they are privately owned and sponsored...and countries can be represented by multiple teams.  Within a team, the roles of the various members are manifold: one, to support the "star" bicyclist in his quest for individual glory, two, work to maximize the team's score, and three, to aid individuals in the team to garner points or times for certain categories that the Tour awards...

As for the championships within the Tour de France, the most prestigious is the General, which is the title you usually hear going to the Tour's annual winner.  This is based on cumulative times spread out over the 21-stage, 2,200-mile course that winds its away across France.  There is also a Points championship competition that involves the top placers in each stage...as well as how well they do at each stage's halfway point.  A Mountains award goes to the bicyclist with the best overall time based on how they handle the climbing sections of the races.  A Young Rider prize goes to the entrant who is 25 or younger with the best cumulative time.  And the Team award...well, I suppose that one is self-evident...

I love how the Tour de France is covered on television, here on NBCSports (Gainesville's Cox Cable Channel 33).  I can either watch it live late in the morning (as I did today) or watch the day's racing replayed later at night.  The multiple camera angles of the race are amazing and give the viewer the sense of being there in the middle of it all.  And the almost virtual tour through France is stunningly beautiful as the contestants race through towns, country roads, and across mountains.  The most interesting thing I've been picking up about the Tour de France, though, is the "peloton"...the main group of bicyclists in the race, who ride excruciatingly close to each other and always seem to be on the verge of a domino-like multiple crash...like in one of the early scenes in the James Bond flick Goldeneye.  It gets even more scary when the road leads uphill or becomes much narrower.  The riders find refuge in the peloton in order to cut down on wind drag...by as much as 40%.  In each stage, there is always a small number of racers who go out in front, far ahead of the peloton.  As the race goes on and the end approaches, the leaders usually begin to fall back and the peloton gains on them.  Sometimes it catches up, but sometimes an early leader will gut it out to the end and win the stage.  And in order to avoid catastrophic collisions at the ends of races, all racers within the peloton group are given the same finishing time...as long as there is no intervening gap of a second or more between finishers...

At the start of each successive stage in the Tour de France, the competitor currently leading with the best cumulative time (General competition) wears a yellow jersey.  The one leading the Points competition wears a green jersey.  The leader in the Mountains competition gets a polka-dot jersey.  The Young Rider leader dons a white jersey, while the ongoing leaders in the Team competition get yellow helmets.  They seem to make a great deal about getting to wear these special jerseys and helmets: personally, I don't see the point in it other to cultivate fan interest and lend some temporary prestige to participants who may not stay at the top as the Tour progresses...

The Tour de France has just finished the 5th stage, which involved a more mountainous course than the previous ones.  This time around the peloton didn't catch up with the leaders, making me wonder whether the more challenging terrain had something to do with it.  Well, tomorrow is another day, and I'm confident the course will once again be interesting and distinctly different...

United Kingdom Votes to Leave European Union

I read somewhere that British Prime Minister David Cameron didn't need to schedule yesterday's vote for his country to decide whether or not to remain a member of the European Union but did so thinking that he would safely win the referendum.  Was he ever wrong: the vote, at a 72% turnout rate, went 52-48% for leaving the E.U.  Other than London, urbanized areas along the Thames, and the western area around Liverpool, the electorate in England and Wales opted for exit.  But Scotland, which not too long ago voted to reject independence and instead remain in the United Kingdom, overwhelmingly voted to remain in the European Union...as did Northern Ireland and Gibraltar...

Cameron today announced his resignation and will leave office sometime this fall.  President Obama had gone over there and urged Britons to vote to stay in the European Union...I wonder whether that had a backlash effect.  I do know that there is much concern there about terrorism and open borders with Europe...and a feeling that they had lost control over much of their own country.  That may or may not be more a matter of perception than reality, but it seemed that many of the votes for exiting the E.U. were anti-Cameron, anti-Conservative Party protest votes.  Also, the right wing is rising throughout Europe, and there is much rhetoric going around promoting nationalism and security.  So it shouldn't have come as any surprise that Donald Trump, while promoting the opening of a new golf course of his in Scotland, would quickly come out in favor of Britain's exit...claiming that they were taking their country back.  The irony of this vote, however, is that Scotland, and possibly even Northern Ireland, may well hold another independence referendum...and the results this time around are almost certain to be different.  And Spain will probably renew their pressure to regain control over Gibraltar.  So "independence" may end up leading to "disintegration" as far as the United Kingdom is concerned...

I don't live over there like the good folks who voted their convictions and hopes about their country's future, so I therefore have not been sharing their experiences as to what has been going on for the last few years.  If there is a big problem concerning how the European Union governs and its relationships among member nations, then maybe this action on the part of the U.K. will give it more of a sense of accountability.  I don't see this happening, though: instead, the media seems to be putting out the idea that it's all because right-wing extremist parties are dramatically rising in Europe.  I suspect there's a bit more to the problem than that, although larger segments of the population there are suffering fears about terrorism and unrestrained immigration from the Middle East, doubtless leading them straight into the arms of these nationalist parties and their political agenda...