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A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

review by Brian Charles Clark

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Marina Lewycka
Penguin, 2006

Marina Lewycka’s first novel is a charming, funny and thoughtful gem of a book. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian riffs on themes that are going to stay topical for a long time to come, namely issues of immigration and aging. The story is simple, deceptively so: Pappa, in his eighties and two years a widower, has fallen in love with Valentina, a Ukrainian woman fifty years his junior. Valentina has large breasts and a penchant for “green satin bras.” Pappa has been rejuvenated by love-cum-lust, but his two daughters, Vera and Nadezhda, recognize a con-woman’s spell at work. Pappa and his wife came to England from Ukraine after World War Two where they raised their daughters; now Valentina wants to immigrate with her son—but she needs a visa, and marrying Pappa is her ticket to life in the “rich” West. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently wrote Rep. Cathy McMorris a letter urging her to take a stand against torture. While she agreed that “Without a doubt, torture is a deplorable, reprehensible act that should be condemned as morally indefensible” she refused to take a stand, adding that “Following the tragedy of September 11, 2001, the President has declared several captured persons as ‘enemy combatants,’ thus not entitled to all of the rights outlined in the Geneva Conventions.” Worse, she adds that this gives the President the power to “use force against those… persons he determines were responsible for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.” Read the rest of this entry »

OK, so I love it that stupidhead’s stupid head is glued onto this thing–but the real thrill is the fabulous rag doll animation…

The Penguin Caleb Williams uses a Blake illustration on the cover of Godwin's anarcho-socialist novel.

review by Brian Charles Clark

Caleb Williams
by William Godwin
Publisher: Penguin, 2005

These days, William Godwin (1756-1836) is best known as the father of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, and as the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, the early feminist who wrote Vindication of the Rights of Women. Considering all the talented women whose names have been erased from the literary canon over the years (if they were there in the first place), it is perhaps fair that Godwin’s has by now been largely forgotten. He is an important figure, though, both in the history of the novel and the history of ideas.

Late eighteenth-century Britain, like its colony in North America and its neighbor across the Channel, was in foment over the proper role of the monarch and the aristocracy. Godwin, who had started adulthood as a member of the clergy, quickly changed his tune under the influence of the Enlightenment and the revolutions in America and France. He is now considered the first liberal or philosophical anarchist and Caleb Williams the first novel to overtly embrace a political ideology. It also happens to be the first thriller, as well. Read the rest of this entry »

Second Space by Czeslaw Milosz

review by Brian Charles Clark

Second Space: New Poems
Czeslaw Milosz
Ecco. 200

Czeslaw Milosz won the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature and was cited for giving voice to “man’s exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts.” Milosz published his first poems in 1930 and wrote nearly until the day he died in 2004, at the age of 93. Born in Lithuania and raised in Russia and Poland, he came to the U.S. in 1960, when he accepted a position at the University of California, Berkeley. His work was banned in Poland for many decades but nevertheless reached Polish readers through the underground press (samizdat, in Russian). After winning the Nobel, though, he was able to return to Lithuania and Poland; he lived in Cracow for the rest of his life.

His most famous book is probably The Captive Mind (1953), widely studied in the U.S. for its portrayal of totalitarianism and life behind the Iron Curtain. In this prose work, Milosz argues that the most effective dissent comes from those with the weakest stomachs: the mind can rationalize a great deal, but the stomach can only take so much. His most widely anthologized poem is “Campo dei Fiori” in which he responds to the Warsaw ghetto, which he saw in 1943. Read the rest of this entry »