Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million

Book Description

A brilliant weave of personal involvement, vivid biography and political insight, Koba the Dread is the successor to Martin Amis’s award-winning memoir, Experience.

Koba the Dread captures the appeal of one of the most powerful belief systems of the 20th century — one that spread through the world, both captivating it and staining it red. It addresses itself to the central lacuna of 20th-century thought: the indulgence of Communism by the intellectuals of the West. In between the personal beginnings and the personal ending, Amis gives us perhaps the best one-hundred pages ever written about Stalin: Koba the Dread, Iosif the Terrible.

The author’s father, Kingsley Amis, though later reactionary in tendency, was a “Comintern dogsbody” (as he would come to put it) from 1941 to 1956. His second-closest, and then his closest friend (after the death of the poet Philip Larkin), was Robert Conquest, our leading Sovietologist whose book of 1968, The Great Terror, was second only to Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago in undermining the USSR. The present memoir explores these connections.

Stalin said that the death of one person was tragic, the death of a million a mere “statistic.” Koba the Dread, during whose course the author absorbs a particular, a familial death, is a rebuttal of Stalin’s aphorism.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews:

Odd, Uncomfortable Book.......2007-05-28

There are a number of good negative reviews already, with which I agree for the most part, especially the one that asks: Why was this written in the first place?

The book attempts to stand on the shoulders of much more serious and lengthy works by Conquest, Pipes, Solzhenitsyn, Mandelstam and many others, and might serve as a good, well-written synopsis of their work, but Amis wanted to make it more pesonal than that and took up some very odd, rather remote contingent themes, such was why Soviet history is regarded with laughter, whereas Nazi history is not. Maybe this is more of a problem in Great Britain. I think we Americans are guilty of not knowing as much about Soviet atrocities as we should, but not of undue levity.

Anyway, there is much for sensitive souls to consider in the story of Russia in the 20th century, some of it is hinted at and evoked here - that maybe there is such a thing as conscious evil in the world, for example. And I think that maybe Amis wanted to provide a picture that included both the horror of the millions of civilian murders inflicted in varying degrees of maliciousness and the intellectual (me, him) sitting in his chair reading about it. But if he did, it doesn't really come across, interesting as they might have been. I think it's a intriguing illusion we have that memorializing people whose lives have been unjustly tormented and cut short somehow influences the deceased favorably.

The oddest thing are the juxtapositions of historical (and outrageous) fact with his personal activities, friendships, pre-occupations, which as I say, don't jell. Ingredients are poured together but they don't make anything.

Another theme hinted at but not developed that interests me very much is that Stalin and his brothers in hatred are symptoms of our soulless, inwardly dead age, in the way that alcoholism is a symptom of inner imbalance in an individual. How does a person like Stalin come about? How does an individual gain power enough over other people to get them to murder? Most people can hardly get someone else to bring them a glass of water. What are the inner dynamics of someone who gets millions to murder other millions?

So all in all, it was a disappointment, though it began well.

Koba the Dread.......2007-04-12

Amis applies his mastery of language to the soviet "experiment", recounting his own story of discovery.
Horrific and brilliant

Amis's screed hasn't aged well.......2007-03-06

This book was my introduction to Soviet history when it came out (a role I suspect it played for many readers) and I thought highly of it at the time. The most memorable moment in the book, for me, was Amis's epiphany that even an achieved socialist utopia would be a kind of "hell." But rereading it recently, I didn't think it had aged well. Amis's tone is relentlessly sour, smug, and soggily self-important in the way that a certain type of Nabokov fan is (I like Nabokov, but his airy pomposity is insufferable in the hands of almost any imitator). I couldn't help but think that a more straightforward style would have suited his subject better. For that matter, the book could have been considerably shorter; as is, it's too long to be a good essay and too short to be a good history book. And despite his boast that he combed through "yards" of books on the Soviet Union to write the book, he makes countless errors. For instance, Lenin's brother is listed in the index as "Alexander Lenin." Did none of the yards of books Amis read tell him that Lenin's real name was Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov? He also makes commonsensical errors that are downright comical: He devotes a paragraph to a sentence of Trotsky's which he finds to be appallingly phrased, apparently unaware that Trotsky didn't originally write that sentence in English.

His utter refusal to cite even the simplest sources is also annoying; it's as if he thinks he's writing a "better" type of book than a simple history text. Perhaps he feared that citations would make it too obvious that he's basically ripped off every major historian in the field. His open letter to Christopher Hitchens (an incredibly embarrassing concept) lectures his Trotsky-worshiping friend in such condescending tones that I can almost imagine the letter's recipient cringing on his behalf.

That said, the book is a decent, readable introduction to Stalin's Russia (Amis appears to know next to nothing of Russia prior to 1917), but this emphasis makes the book's thesis seem lopsided. Surely the majority of Western leftists don't need to be told that Stalin was a wicked tyrant. If Amis actually took his own thesis seriously, he'd devote his book to tearing apart Lenin and Trotsky. I couldn't help but think that Amis simply didn't have the intellectual stomach for this task - much easier to regurgitate large chunks of Solzhenitsyn and Conquest and smugly imply that Hitchens is some kind of apologist for the Gulag. At one point he implies that the February Revolution was the "real" revolution, but at another point he brusquely dismisses Kerensky as a fool. Most of his judgments seem filched from other historians. This isn't a bad place to start, but don't let this be the last book you read on the subject.

Koba the laughing boy.......2006-10-01

This is a depressing yet brilliantly written book that jumps in your face from page 1 as the brutal history of misery and suffering inflicted on the USSR by Stalin, Lenin and their company of Bolsheviks is laid before the reader. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn explores and describes the soviet system brilliantly in his Gulag Archipelago books, so too Amis explores deep into the psyche of a despotic, hopeless system of government and its deadly effect on the lives of the people it dictated to.

One can only wonder at what kind of bitter, unlucky chance could come upon a people who enjoyed a brief period of inter revolutionary freedom after the overthrow of the imperial system, and with a large range of alternative parties to choose from, ended up with the despotic, psychotic Bolsheviks led by Lenin and co as top dogs at the pinnacle of the pack. Vasily Grossman's words as quoted page 251 is an excellent summation of what freedom is supposed to be. There are so many examples of countless lives destroyed physically, mentally and spiritually in this book that it hits you like a sledgehammer as you wonder thank god l was never born into this insanity. Yet at the beginning the system was built on lies, dictatorship of the proletariat meant dictatorship of all by a handful and if you did not like it then the Soviet govt would say stuff you, you are surplus and you can rot in a concentration camp or be dispatched physically.

Amis maintains his white hot rage against the Bolsheviks, the USSR and of course Stalin for the whole book. The reputations of Lenin and Trotsky also sizzle like sausages on a barbeque on a hot summer's day in the Antipodes as Amis applies his blowtorch of a pen to their revolution and the system of repressive government they created which fell into Stalin's lap. As for Stalin himself, well Amis lays cudgel blows in all directions upon him and leaves no stone unturned in his description of the evil, misery and suffering he created and inflicted upon the Soviet Union. Essentially the book is about Stalin, and Amis is able to capture the evil essence of the man in his personal and public life and lay it all before the reader.

Learn about Stalin.......2006-05-12

British novelist Martin Amis ponders the question, `why is it that one never laughs about Hitler's Holocaust which claimed the lives of 11 million, while members of the left are able to laugh about Stalin's rule, which claimed the lives of over 20 million?' This is an examination of the socio-historical-political facets that underlie Soviet style communism, and seeks to provide explanation for its broad support among the European intellectual elite of the 1950's, including Amis' father Kingsley. It is also a fairly rigorous, though often unoriginal forensic portrait of Stalin's particular breed of tyranny, which Amis attributes both to his insanity as well as the totalitarian nature of the Marxist-Leninist system which he inherited.

This book might be though of as a letter to those of the old left such as Christopher Hitchens, who continue to derive a fair amount of laughter and enjoyment for their past follies. Amis breaks from his historiography in these moments, and he imposes his own anti-communism on Hitchens' work; he contrives dicey judgments such as,

"although I always liked Christopher's journalism, there seemed to me to be something wrong with it, something faintly but pervasively self-defeating: the sense that the truth could be postponed. This flaw disappeared in 1989, and his prose made immense gains in burnish and authority. I used to attribute the change to the death of Christopher's father, late in 1988, and to subsequent convulsions in his life. It had little or nothing to do with that, I now see. It had to do with the collapse of Communism" (pg. 47).

This is painting with a broad brush; one could easily make the case that Hitchens' journalistic authority diminished after his stance on Iraq in 2003. Still, Amis does a competent job of presenting the facts to the members of the hard left such as Hitchens, who have always taken a flippant tone in evaluating the USSR.

Amis' historical work is fine, though it is generally unvaried and unoriginal; he relies mostly on Alexander Solzhenitsyn's standard historical accounts in the Gulag Archipelago Volumes, which are more than competent and standard. There are also some interesting looks at the correspondence between Nabokov and Edmund Wilson during this period. However, Amis' occasionally bizarre political oversimplifications, i.e. "[a]s in Germany, this was the birth of mass-media propaganda; people were unaware, then, that propaganda was propaganda-and propaganda worked" (pg. 213). Such declarations are less then insightful, and fail to provide adequate explanations as to Stalin's popularity. Koba the Dread is still a fairly competent evaluation of Stalin's life and politics, and it provides a fair and brief overview of the Soviet Union for readers who desire a quick blow-by-blow, even if it is derivative of Solzhenitsyn.

La indulgencia asimetrica.(Resena de libro): An article from: Letras Libres

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La indulgencia asimetrica.(Resena de libro): An article from: Letras Libres
Christopher Domínguez Michael
Manufacturer: Editorial Vuelta, S.A. de C.V.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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This digital document is an article from Letras Libres, published by Thomson Gale on February 1, 2003. The length of the article is 1400 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: La indulgencia asimetrica.(Resena de libro)
Author: Christopher Domínguez Michael
Publication: Letras Libres (Magazine/Journal)
Date: February 1, 2003
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 5 Issue: 50 Page: 69(2)

Article Type: Resena de libro

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Koba The Dread Laughter and The Twenty Million.

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Koba The Dread Laughter and The Twenty Million.
Martin. AMIS
Manufacturer: Jonathan Cape
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OOW89I

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Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million
Martin Amis
Manufacturer: VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WT79SU

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Intellectuals and War

A complex hero

Fascinating revelation of history through personal story

Astounding tale of an unknown chapter in Holocaust history

Absorbing well researched book on Varian Fry , Vichy France

A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry
Andy Marino
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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A Hero of Our Own: The Story of Varian Fry

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Villa Air-Bel: World War II, Escape, and a House in Marseille

ASIN: 0312267673

Amazon.com

What bookish, young Harvard man Varian Fry described as his "own little war" involved no small ambition: working under the nose of the Nazis through the early years of World War II, Fry set out almost single-handedly to rescue a hefty portion of Europe's cultural and intellectual capital. Literally boatloads of Europe's best and brightest minds--poets, scientists, philosophers, musicians, painters--found safe haven with Fry and safe passage from Europe, eluding the ubiquitous Gestapo plainclothesmen ("the green fedoras") and the street-by-street raids by their Vichy cronies. Writer Andrew Marino (Herschel: The Boy Who Started World War II), thanks in no small part to the earlier research of editor Donald Carroll, details the war years of this man, dubbed "America's Oskar Schindler" and the New York-based Emergency Rescue Committee that he helped found to fund his work.

Reading like a cross between Casablanca and A Year in Provence, A Quiet American follows Varian Fry from his tumultuous beginnings convincing (among others) Eleanor Roosevelt of the necessity of his mission to his work with gangsters and gun-runners in the streets of Marseilles in order to secure the safety of Europe's intelligentsia, including such luminaries as Marc Chagall, Heinrich Mann, Enrico Fermi, and Hannah Arendt. The comparison to Oskar Schindler is apt and well deserved, but Fry's tale is all the better for his unique transformation: while Schindler was something of an opportunist-made-good, Fry was an effete, preppy intellectual, sincerely inspired by idealistic notions, whose secret work shaped him into a scrappy, resourceful hero. --Paul Hughes

Book Description

The story of Varian Fry, called the "real Rick" of Casablanca, is perhaps one of the most unknown, yet extraordinary sagas of World War II. This penetrating biography follows Varian Fry through his adult life--from his beginnings in the 1930s as a Harvard graduate and political journalist to his arrival in Marseille in 1940 where he managed to spirit away thousands of Europe's cultural elite by falsifying passports, creating new identities, and always resorting to subterfuge. The list of those saved includes: Hannah Arendt, Andre Breton, Franz Werful and his wife Alma Mahler, Heinrich Mann, Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Andre Masson, and Max Ernst among others.A Quiet American is an effort to extensively examine the life of a genuine American hero whose political and cultural influence is still largely unacknowledged.

Customer Reviews:

Intellectuals and War.......2005-01-02

Hermann Goering is reputed to have said, "When I hear the word 'culture', I reach for my pistol."
This, from one of the most prolific looters of art in recent history, takes some explanation which, as it happens, is not forthcoming.
However, upon reading of Varian Fry's heroic attempts to keep Europe from "blowing its brains out" by detaining and, certainly, eventually killing intellectuals wholesale, one may have a bit of sympathy for Goering.
It isn't the art, it's the artists.
Fry was an odd character from his earliest days when he easily manipulated his parents into letting him avoid school and do whatever it was that his latest whim desired.
He had an unusual though substantial education, and was a writer and journalist and left-wing intellectual in the Thirties. He was also what used to be called "neurotic" in that he had a number of personality traits we could call counterproductive, if we could ever figure out what Fry might think of as productive. He had a bit of hypochondria, was sometimes hardpressed to make a decision, made friends and lost them over small things, and married an older woman with whom he had a relationship whose aspects, as Marino details them, make the reader squirm, just a bit, over what Marino doesn't detail.
Whatever he managed to accomplish in those days seems to have been a function of high intelligence and fierce energy, opposed by various personality quirks.
And then he went to Marseille to rescue European intellectuals.
His transformation at that point is amazing. From intellectual dilettante, indulging his personal whims, he became, overnight, indistinguishable from a hardened and trained operative of the OSS or the British SOE (Special Operations Executive). Marino does not tell us how that happened, since it is almost certainly inexplicable.
Unfortunately for Fry and others, the same process did not occur in many of those he tried to help.
If there is one thing I did not expect in reading this book, it was the difficulty, sometimes the near impossibility, of chivvying various intellectuals through reasonably simple (given the circumstances) procedures that would save their lives.
Some, told to keep a low profile while things were worked out, paraded themselves in Marseille's restaurants and bars. Others refused simple instructions, or jibbed at the last moment, doing either nothing or something quite stupid. Fry spent a good deal of the time and resources he had--not much of either--in bailing out individuals or repairing or replacing procedures they'd put in jeopardy.
It is almost too good to be true, in terms of literary contrast, to find that Fry also had a group of British soldiers captured prior to Dunkirk to get out of the France. These men, fit and cheerful, followed directions without question, solved what problems remained, and were successfully sent home. There could have been no greater contrast between ordinary people and intellectuals.
Any reader who becomes involved in the narrative must, although sixty years and more have gone, become frustrated at the inability of Fry's charges to get out of their own way. One, after having been trouble on the European end, arrived safely in New York and began babbling to all about every secret arrangement Fry had made to get him and others safely out of the Gestapo's clutches.
Fry, for this period, was clear-minded and hard-headed and full of energy. In periods of crisis, people can go into overdrive for extended periods of time. Eventually, they collapse. Fry, however, managed to work like a fiend for months in circumstances of the greatest stress. He never lost his focus and, indeed, was able to operate outside any constraints that one might have thought his earlier life placed on him. In one case, having been betrayed and done out of a substantial amount of funding, Fry met with some of Marseille's underworld bosses and took out a murder contract on the traitor.
Eventually, having been sent home by the authorities, he returned to the intellectual's life he'd left, including neuroses, counterproductive activities, odd relationships, and eventual death in obscurity.
The obscurity is partly a matter of official activity. It wasn't until many years later, when Fry was honored in Israel as one of the Righteous, that Warren Christopher apologized on behalf of the State Department for all the obstructionism Fry had had to face from the United States.
Fry saved a great many intellectuals from death, providing the West, mostly the United States, with an intellectual boost (some became successful screenwriters as well), by finding within himself a person absolutely invisible to anyone looking at him either before or after his exploits. The greatest mystery of the story is that contradiction.
The second greatest mystery is why saving intellectuals from certain death is so much like herding cats.
What is it about them?

A complex hero.......2000-12-28

As the other reviewers indicate, this is an excellent book. The setting of Fry's heroism, Marseille and the environs of the South of France, permit an oblique perspective on the Holocaust, which unfolded principally much farther to the north and the east. Without the overwhelming machinery of the sealed boxcars, the gas chambers, the crematoria, some of the underlying causes of the Holocaust come into focus: the bureacratic obstructionism of the U.S. State department, motivated partly by national self interest and partly by the genteel anti-Semitism of individual Foreign Officers, provides a glimpse into how value-free institutional behaviour can be--a deadly underlying cause in Hitler's rise. The sympathetic behaviour of peasants living on the border and of petty police officers contrasts with the callous, and often actively evil, behaviour of their official leaders.

But always, there is the central enigma of Varian Fry himself--a complex, difficult , troubled man, in many ways a talented failure, who because of his clear moral vision became the catalyst for saving the flower of European artists and writers from the clutches of the Gestapo and their collaborators.

In another book, Todorov posits that in extreme moral situations, the basic moral unit for effective action is two, because he notes that the rescuers--Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust were rarely individuals; often they were husbands and wives. Todorov's idea is the combination of personality traits and practical abilities that produces effective resistence to an overwhelming social climate of evil is beyond the range of a single individual, and that it requires a minimum of two people to act effectively in this kind of environment.

Interestingly, Fry did organise a staff of incredibly courageous co-workers to help save his "clients", but the intriguing question is whether his very flaws were part of Fry's mysterious ability to distance himself from his society (ie American) and to plunge into effective action to resist Hitler's evil earlier than almost anyone else.

This intriguing book is very rewarding and worthwhile. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 only because of an occasional passage in which the author, who seems to be almost super-abundantly talented, seems to stray into almost novelistic detail that would seem unlikely to be supported by his research. This is mostly atmospheric, and doesn't cast a shadow on the facts themselves.

Fascinating revelation of history through personal story.......2000-12-12

I encourage anyone interested in WWII to read this book. Especially fascinating to me were the depiction of important characters in pre-war Europe. I gobbled the book, then started looking for more - I would advise against following this book with Varian Fry's own account of this period, because it seems like Marino covered it pretty well.

Astounding tale of an unknown chapter in Holocaust history.......2000-05-13

Sometime, not-so-admirable people do incredibly admirable things, and find in themselves qualities that no one, themselves included, knew were there. Such was the case of Varian Fry.

In August 1940, Varian Fry boarded a plane in New York and flew to Spain, and from there to Marseilles, on a mission that would resonate far beyond his imagination.

Fry was an historian, involved with "radical" politics: the Spanish Civil War, the looming Holocaust. He went from observing and writing about the coming crises to actively participating in a way that no one who knew him, or even he himself, would have anticipated. Far from being identified as a humanitarian, he was, in fact, an intellectual snob, a classicist by training.

But he put his life on the line in an effort to save the leading cultural, intellectual, and artistic lights of Europe. Truth to tell, he had no idea what he was getting himself, or his New York sponsors, into, so the evolution of this rather untouchable, remote aesthete into a mover and shaker who consorted with the Marseilles underworld (and enjoyed it!) and worked outside the law is fascinating to observe.

Varian Fry was personally responsible for saving the lives of, among others, Marc Chagall, Lion Feuchtwanger, Victor Serge, Heinrich Mann, André Gide, Franz Werfel, Andre Breton, Max Ernst, Hannah Arendt... He also saved about 1500 other lesser known people. Altogether, in the year he spent in France before being arrested and kicked out by the Vichy puppets of the Gestapo, he turned himself inside out, discovering in himself a depth of caring and feeling that neither he, nor most of the people who knew him, would have suspected was present.

The story itself is so riveting that the book would have to be illiterate not to be absorbing. I found it well-written, with fascinating studies of the characters who worked with, and against Fry. It sort of fades out at the end, but then again, so did Fry, after his return to New York. He died in 1967, unrecognized for his work until the year before his death. In 1996, Israel further declared him "Righteous Among the Nations," the only American so honored.

Absorbing well researched book on Varian Fry , Vichy France.......1999-12-17

If you are interested in the dark events leading to the holocaust, especially French collaboration, this is an absorbing book. For those not quite so familiar with Vichy France it will be an eye opener, for there can be no doubt that many French officials bent over backwards to serve their German masters during those shameful periodic roundups and deportations of the Jews in France. New to this reader, were the descriptions of the horrible conditions of the "refugee camps" in Vichy-controlled France. These were not the infamous concentration camps because detainees could be released, but they were, nonetheless, death camps simply because of shameful conditions and inhuman neglect. In fact, some 3,000 Jews and non- Jews died in those camps in southern France because of the atrocious conditions.

But French Vichy officials were not the only villains. Americans may be surprised to learn just how anti-Semitic U.S. officialdom was during the early years. One could argue that were it not for the openly anti-Semitic treatment of Jews by our own State Department there would be no book written about Varian Fry. If all of the US officials in France, in the Embassy and various consulates, had a mind set to save the Jews it is quite likely thousands more could have been saved. Varian Fry filled a void. He was fighting two battles, the enemy in France and the enemy at home, in the form of the State Department. It was a shameful period, only fairly recently recognized by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

This book, about Varian Fry's rescue of the Jews under the auspices of the American Emergency Rescue Committee, raises some questions. Why was he not recognized sooner? And why did many of those Jews rescued seem to turn their backs on him, once saved? Part of the answer is simply that Fry is not a very heroic figure, not even particularly likable. For some he was distant, not easy to know, but he did what he had to do at the time and that did not include being popular with everyone. It is unfortunate that personality flaws probably did play a role early on in the assessment of his role in that period. Even after reading this book, I cannot shake an ambivalent view of Fry as a tragic figure caught very much by accident in an heroic period. Yet, what he did rightfully makes him a hero.

One must read this book to better understand that tragic period and place. Marseilles was the end of a funnel at the beginning of the war. Jews from all over Europe were spilling into that port city, desperate to get out, their backs against the Mediterranean wall, but not a non-Jewish friend in sight to help. Enter a few good people like Fry. It would suffice to be a hero at that time in that place simply by feeling compassion. Elie Wiesel expressed it when he said, "In those times one climbed to the summit of humanity simply by remaining human."

There were other heros and heroines to be sure, the cooperative police inspector, the compassionate Prefet official. I had just finished reading Mary Jayne Gold's Memoir of Marseilles, 1940-1941 in which she recounts her version of that same rescue effort. My feeling is that she deserves a little better treatment than Marino gave her. The fact that Fry may have dismissed her should not diminish her contribution. Although deceased now after a long life, she genuinely felt that those were really the only useful years of her life. (See Amazon.com for review of her book, "Crossroads Marseilles, Nineteen Hundred and Forty" by Mary Jayne Gold)

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Policy Review, published by Hoover Institution Press on February 1, 2000. The length of the article is 2728 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Hero and Oddball.(A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry)(Review) (book review)
Author: Christopher Caldwell
Publication: Policy Review (Refereed)
Date: February 1, 2000
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
Page: 77

Article Type: Book Review

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A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry.(Review) (book review): An article from: American Jewish History

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A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry.(Review) (book review): An article from: American Jewish History
Haim Genizi
Manufacturer: American Jewish Historical Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B0008J93TW
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from American Jewish History, published by American Jewish Historical Society on March 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1229 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fry.(Review) (book review)
Author: Haim Genizi
Publication: American Jewish History (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2000
Publisher: American Jewish Historical Society
Volume: 88 Issue: 1 Page: 136

Article Type: Book Review

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Customer Reviews:

Looking for real people.......2002-11-25

I am the author of this book
When I put together the pieces for this book, I wanted to share with readers the sight and sounds of those people I interviewed. Each person, each story is special to me because they seem to capture the person as I felt. Each person I talked to seemed to want to share their secret lives with me. It was fun.

A Breath of Fresh Air!.......2002-07-31

This review is long overdue. I picked up Al's book almost a year ago at a local book sale. I'm not a big reader, but having met Al in person led me to buy the book. I began skimming the book later on that night. Eventually, I stopped skimming and began reading. The profiles in this book are interesting. Yes, these are 'everyday people', but Al's insightful writing sheds electricity onto their lives. It was really like a breath of fresh air to read about the lives ordinary people lead. It's not everyday, in this fast-paced world of ours, when you take the time out to sit down and learn about the strangers who come and go. I highly recommend this pleasurable read.

Sullivan: gritty realism, a pure reading pleasure.......2001-11-23

If you ever met Al Sullivan, the last thing you'd do is picture him as a dashing young soldier long ago at the height of the Vietnam war - much less baby sitting a bunch of freaky rockers outside his helicopter at a place called Woodstock. Yet, that's one of the duties he 'volunteered' for.

In his essay "By The Time I Got To Woodstock" Sullivan briefly notes his 1st visit to the upstate refuge - and his overwhelming fear of helicopters. It is one of the rare times in Everyday People that he uses "I". It's to be forgiven him because he immediately uses his modern day visit to Woodstock as a newspeg to compare that town with Secaucus - his current tour of duty.

Sullivan worked for me for a few months in 96-97, and though the months were few, the impact has been long-lasting. He covered the mundane meetings, sure, but there was always something else lurking behind the touseld hair and the distant stare. He had the ragtag Tandy laptop blinking on one desk, the company terminal blinking there, a notepad in front of him - all while he was on the phone talking to another source. Sullivan was always on the go, always three steps ahead of the sunshine, so to speak. It is a pleasure to read him again.

It was there, in those other stories that Al set himself apart. If he workd for me now, he'd be a 'special writer' - that's someone who does his beat, and also turns in outstanding stories from left field, Clark's Pond, the emergency room and just about anywhere else fate takes him.

"Down and Out in Hoboken" relays the chance meeting with a panhandler at St. Mary's Hospital. The panhandler - whose name Sullivan never learns - says "People give me money to make me go away..." And in just a couple hundred words, you learn an awful lot about the panhandler - and the skill of Sullivan's perception of people. That's what makes Everyday People in its gritty realism a pure reading pleasure.

Perhaps the editors of Everyday People could have selected a few longer profiles, but as Sullivan notes in his Preface, "the word count has always been my curse," and I'll vouch for his observation here, "as it is for all prolific journalists," and again I agree. While we await the next volume, dig in here, and meet some interesting everyday people.

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