World War II ended twenty-three years before I was born. But since I grew up hearing about it, World War II was almost living history for me.
All four of my grandparents could tell you exactly where they were, and what they were doing, when they heard the news about Pearl Harbor.
My maternal grandfather, then 19 years old, enlisted in the US Navy the following week. His enlistment led to many combat experiences in the Atlantic. These were stories I grew up with.
My grandfather in the Atlantic Ocean, 1943
In 2024, the ranks of living Americans who can remember December 7, 1941 are growing thin. It was 83 years ago, after all.
In one sense, this is perfectly natural and unremarkable. None of my grandparents could remember the assassination of President Lincoln, or the Battle of Antietam. History moves on, and each new generation has fresh tragedies to remember.
This process of generational forgetting seems to happen more quickly as one grows older. I am sometimes shocked to meet young adults who do not remember 9/11. And then I do the math.
I would like to say that I will remember Pearl Harbor Day in honor of the Americans who died on December 7, 1941. That would be the correct and most patriotic way to put it.
But if I’m being honest, I’ll remember Pearl Harbor Day because it traumatized and moved my grandparents, who told me about it.
Pearl Harbor forever changed the life of my maternal grandfather, in particular. I heard about the war from him. And because of him, World War II will always be living—and secondhand—history for me.
Many years ago, I watched the movie adaptation of Pat Conroy’s 1986 novel, The Prince of Tides. I only recently got around to reading the book.
The 1991 movie stars Nick Nolte as Tom Wingo, a South Carolinian who finds himself a fish out of water in New York City.
Why is Tom Wingo in NYC? His famous sister, poet Savannah Wingo, has just had a psychotic episode. Savannah requires the intervention of psychiatrist Susan Lowenstein, played by Barbara Streisand.
The Prince of Tides movie poster, 1991
The movie revolves around the resultant romance between Tom Wingo and Susan Lowenstein. The movie poster collage even features an image of Streisand and Nolte in a moment of what appears to be post-coital tenderness.
This was done, no doubt, so that Hollywood could bill the movie as a romantic drama, targeted at the then middle-aged Baby Boomer demographic. But this represented a vast departure from the emphasis of Pat Conroy’s long novel.
The novel does include a romantic, adulterous interlude between Wingo and Lowenstein, both of whom are trapped in unfulfilling, ill-fitting marriages. (A very middle-aged Baby Boomer theme.) But most of the novel consists of flashback stories from Wingo’s troubled, colorful childhood.
Tom Wingo, his twin sister Savannah, and his brother Luke were all scarred by their formative years in South Carolina. The 600-page novel is mostly a long series of flashback stories that drive home this point, again and again. This is all that happened to them…This is why Tom Wingo and his siblings went so very wrong…
As a result, The Prince of Tides is less a single novel than a series of loosely connected stories, which Wingo revisits in memory during his extended stay in New York City. Some of these stories are interesting, or at least have the potential to be interesting. Far too many of them, though, come across as random and far-fetched.
For example, there is a subplot in which the Wingo siblings, as adolescents, abduct an albino porpoise from a public aquarium. The elements of this side tale are so improbable as to resemble slapstick.
There is an early flashback story in which the children’s coarse, abusive father, Henry Wingo, is a downed pilot behind German lines in World War II. This story seems rushed, and almost as improbable as the subsequent white porpoise tale.
And then there are the really weird subplots involving miscarried infants and the Wingo siblings’ grandparents. I’ll leave those for the reader to explore on her own, if she decides to read the book.
The Prince of Tides would have been much better if Conroy had written it as a series of books. Or, perhaps, a series of long short stories about the same characters. But the publishing industry of the mid-1980s was focused on delivering thick, standalone novels for the shelves of B. Dalton and Waldenbooks. That’s what The Prince of Tides is, in terms of its packaging. The storytelling suffers as a result.
The Prince of Tides lacks a central narrative drive. Look here! Conroy tells the reader. No—now look over here at this!
Pat Conroy’s novels tend to be hit or miss for me. I loved The Lords of Discipline (1980). I found South of Broad (2009) to be a slog. The Prince of Tides is a novel that I do not regret reading once, but not one that I am ever likely to read again.
Conroy grew up in South Carolina, the son of a harsh military father. Just like so many of his characters. All of his novels, in one way or another, tend to be autobiographical. Conroy seems to be revisiting his own troubled childhood in fiction, again and again.
Self-focused fiction can be both beautifully authentic and numbingly self-indulgent. The Prince of Tides is some of both.
A blast of unseasonable cold has struck Cincinnati for Thanksgiving 2024, but I plan to have a good holiday nonetheless. I may even make it into the gym later today.
I hope that you, Dear Reader, will spend the day with people you love. If half of your friends/relatives voted for Trump, and half for Harris (a statistical likelihood throughout most of the country) dinnertime discussion may be interesting, to say the least.
Keep your cool and try to make the best of it. Remember that politics always change, but Thanksgiving remains the same, coming back year after year.
Just look at the above artwork from Norman Rockwell, 1919. The image is as inviting today as it was 105 years ago.
I love many people who, for whatever reason, don’t see the world through the same lenses I do. You likely do, too; and should.
I shall return on Friday. In the meantime, I hope you have a happy and safe Thanksgiving 2024.
Television in the 1980s wasn’t afraid to be shamelessly fun and escapist. Case-in-point: The A-Team, which aired from 1983 to 1987.
The premise of The A-Team was actually semi-plausible: during the Vietnam War, an elite American commando unit is charged with a crime they did not commit. Having escaped from a military prison, they survive in present-day (the 1980s) as “fixers” and soldiers of fortune (only for the good guys and noble causes, though!).
That was where the realism of the A-Team ended, however.
One thing about any A-Team episode: no matter how many rounds were fired, no one ever got hurt. Another thing about every A-Team episode: it was sure to end with a needlessly elaborate, Rube Goldberg-style plan. Often this involved modifying a commandeered vehicle into a makeshift tank.
The series made an international star of Mr. T, who had already distinguished himself in Rocky III (1982). The A-Team also starred Dirk Benedict, whom all Gen X teens and adolescents remembered from the much loved, but short-lived Battlestar Galactica (1978-9).
Yes, The A-Team was cheesy, throwaway television. But it was a great means to unwind for an hour on a Tuesday night in 1984.
It’s 1978 and Christmas is approaching. That means lots of television ads for McDonald’s gift certificates!
As I recall, these came in denominations of 50 cents and 1 dollar. That was not a fortune even in 1978. (Stagflation, remember!) But in 1978, a single McDonald’s gift certificate of 50 cents or a dollar could at at least buy one menu item. Not like nowadays.
These were advertised as stocking stuffers and X-mas card inserts, not proper gifts. Even in the 1970s, we weren’t quite that parsimonious.
I don’t remember ever buying any of these, let alone receiving any. But McDonald’s really pushed them in television ads in November and December.
**When walking down lonely roads at night, beware the hellhounds!**
Jason Kelley is a college filmmaker who has accepted a challenge: walk eleven miles down the most haunted road in rural Ohio, the so-called Shaman’s Highway.
If Jason completes his task, he’ll win a $2,000 prize.
But before he reaches his destination, he’ll have to cope with evil spirits, trees that come to life, an undead witch, and packs of roving hellhounds!
A creepy supernatural thriller! Not for the faint of heart!
I’ve barely sampled Isaac Asimov’s fiction. (I own a book of his short stories.) But I caught a few interviews of the late science fiction author on YouTube, and found him to be an interesting character.
I was therefore open to reading his second autobiography, I, Asimov: a Memoir. (The title is a pun on his novel, I, Robot).
I’m finishing the book up now. Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) seems to have been a powerful combination of strong intellect with an engaging personality. Reading his biography, I almost felt as if I knew him. I regretted that I never met him, in fact.
Born in the Soviet Union, Asimov and his parents emigrated to New York when the future author was only three years old. (He notes several times, with regret, that he never learned Russian.)
I, Asimov will be of most interest to fans of his fiction, and to readers who want to learn something of his prolific writing habits. I fell into the latter category.
Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books in his lifetime. He was certainly prolific. Asimov describes writing in addictive terms. Nothing, Asimov claimed, made him as happy as the time he spent at his typewriter.
Why the emphasis on “typewriter”? Asimov lived well into the personal computer/word processor age, but he preferred working on physical sheets of paper. He eventually acquired a word processor, but he used it mostly for typesetting his manuscripts before final submission.
Asimov did not survive into the age of truly modern word processing software (beginning around 1995). He did not live long enough to experience the Internet or social media, either. One suspects that he would have been an active blogger. (Asimov also wrote thousands of essays, letters, and postcards.)
He did not like to travel, and often turned down speaking engagements that would have required him to leave New York City. On this point I can sympathize with him; I have never enjoyed the logistics of travel, whether by car or by plane.
Asimov was an atheist, but he was not annoying in his atheism. He simply didn’t believe in God, or in a reality beyond the purely material. He was an avowed humanist, and had a strong (if irreligious) sense of right and wrong.
I, Asimov consists of 166 easy-to-read essays, arranged in more or less chronological order. I enjoyed Asimov’s memoir, and this book has made me want to take a deeper dive into his fiction.
These are very good stories, on the whole. I enjoy Benson’s work somewhat more than I like that of his contemporary, M.R. James. Benson’s tales are more lurid, prefiguring the pulp writers of the 1930s and 1940s.
E.F. Benson’s ghost stories influenced H.P. Lovecraft, who influenced Stephen King.
Benson’s stories do follow a pattern, however. A single male protagonist travels to a location where supernatural events are known to take place. Often this is a resort, an old manor, or a guest house.
Strange things happen, and the action builds to a not unpredictable climax. The haunted location is usually the scene of a gruesome murder in the distant past.
So yes, there is a formula, but an entertaining one. If you like ghost stories with an old-fashioned feel to them, you might want to give this collection a try.
In 1989 I was 21 years old and a student at the University of Cincinnati.
I was also deep in the initial phase of my fascination with Japan, its language, and its culture.
Japan would become a lifelong fascination of mine…with some inevitable diminutions. Thirty-five years later, I am no longer quite as enraptured with every aspect of Japan as I once was. But I still spend time each day listening to Japanese-language YouTubers, podcasters, and media broadcasts. If a story about Japan appears in the Western media, I’m usually on top of it.
But back to 1989. Around the same time that I discovered Japan, I also discovered the novels of James Clavell. The two were interconnected, you see. It is impossible to read Clavell and not become interested in the cultures of East Asia. James Clavell’s books fueled my early interest in learning Japanese.
James Clavell
Clavell (1921 – 1994) was a British-Australian man of the World War II generation. He published most of his Asian Saga novels between the early 1960s and the mid-1980s. This was a time when Asian languages and cultures were not widely known in the West, and a certain amount of exoticism, or what is sometimes called orientalism, was par for the course.
Clavell’s work has thusly been critiqued by the nattering nabobs of political correctness. Not all of their criticisms are completely unfair…from the perspective of the third decade of the twenty-first century, that is. But Shōgun, Clavell’s novel about Edo Period Japan, was published in 1975. Almost 50 years ago. In those days, almost no one in the United States bothered to learn anything about Japan, except for the fact that Japan had been our World War II enemy.
Clavell often got the history wrong, too. Shōgun is loosely based on the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate in the early 1600s. Clavell captures the big sweep of that historical period, but the names and personalities are largely fictional.
The main character of Shōgun, John Blackthorne, is loosely based on William Adams (1564 -1620), known in Japan as Miura Anjin. Suffice it to say that the real William Adams was not nearly as exciting as Clavell’s creation.
What Clavell brought to the table was the genuine enthusiasm of a Westerner who was trying his level best to understand East Asian culture. He did this imperfectly, to be sure. But his passion for the subject matter was infectious.
Ditto for Clavell’s skills as a storyteller. When he was at his best, Clavell could tell a story that would hold your interest even if you didn’t share his enthusiasm for Asia.
I distinctly remember reading Shōgun in 1989. The novel was already more than a decade old then. Although I was busy with schoolwork and a part-time job, I nevertheless made my way through this 1,110-page potboiler within about two weeks.
That was 35 years ago. I occasionally reread books, provided a.) the book is worth a second reading, and b.) at least 10 years have elapsed since my first reading. Shōgun made the cut on both counts. This time, however, I’m listening to the audiobook—all 52 hours worth.
As noted above, my fascination with Japan, while still extant, doesn’t burn quite as intensely as it did in 1989. Japan was an unknown land of adventure for me 35 years ago. Since 1989, I’ve spent a lot of time in Japan…mostly for business. For me, Japan has become not the land of samurais and geishas, but the land of interminable business meetings and automobile factories. But I still love the place.
James Clavell’s storytelling abilities in Shōgun are just as good the second time around. After 35 years, I still recall some of the book’s major plot points, but enough time has passed that I’m still surprised by much of what I read. I also have the benefit of historical knowledge about Japan. (I knew almost nothing about Japan’s history in 1989.) And yes, I’ve been there now, multiple times.
What about the television adaptations?
The first TV adaptation of Shōgun starred Richard Chamberlain. It ran on NBC for five days in September 1980. You didn’t need any streaming subscriptions or memberships. The show was supported by commercials.
I recall watching the first screen adaptation of Shōgun when it ran, but in 1980 I was 12 years old. I knew next to nothing about Japan, and most of it went over my head.
I’m aware of the streaming FX series which was released this year. A remake was long overdue after 45 years; and the teaser clips I have seen online look promising.
Typical of the streaming era, there is no way to watch the show without buying a subscription to Hulu or Disney+. How I long for the benighted “old days”, when television was mostly free, and far more convenient to watch. But I digress.
I’ll get around to watching the 2024 screen adaptation of Shōgun at some point, I’m sure. In the meantime, I will content myself with this second journey through the book, via audio. I’m a little more than halfway through, and nowhere close to being bored.
The Consultant is the story of an American marketing consultant who takes a business trip to Osaka, Japan, and talks to the wrong woman in a bar.
One thing leads to another, and he ends up in North Korea.
The story is loosely (I emphasize loosely) based on real events.
The North Korean government has carried out targeted kidnapping campaigns of civilians over the years. Most of the known targets have been South Koreans and Japanese. But there is no reason why an American couldn’t be the target of such a kidnapping. This novel explores that scenario.
The Consultant is a good read for Tom Clancy fans who also like James Clavell…or James Clavell fans who also like a bit of action.
As many of you will know, I recently wrapped upThe Cairo Deception, my 5-book World War II series.
One of the final chapters of the book depicts the Beatles performing in Hamburg, West Germany in December 1962. (I won’t go into more story detail than that, so as to avoid spoilers.)
This is actually true. When I discovered this lesser known piece of rock music history, I just couldn’t resist putting it in the book, as an Easter egg for Beatles fans.
The Beatles both resided and performed in Hamburg from August 1960 to December 1962. The Beatles’ Hamburg residence took place shortly before they became a global phenomenon. The band also performed at a music venue in Hamburg called The Star-Club, as described in Postwar: Book 5 of The Cairo Deception.
The Beatles of the Hamburg period involved a slightly different lineup of the band: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best. After the group returned to England at the end of 1962, Sutcliffe and Best left the band, and Ringo Starr was hired on as the new drummer.
A lone American, kidnapped and taken to North Korea. He has one objective: escape!
A story ripped from the headlines, and immersed in the deadly politics of North Korea.
A thriller for fans of Tom Clancy, James Clavell, and Dale Brown. A riveting story about an ordinary man who is forced to take on the most evil regime on earth!
The book haul video is a thing on the Japanese corners of YouTube, just as it is among English-language booktubers.
As in English, the Japanese book haul video (and the entire booktuber sector) is dominated by young women. No complaints here, except to point out that men of all ages, in all countries, should read more.
I have not been to Japan for more than a decade now. One thing I really miss about being in Japan is browsing bookstores, and looking for new books to read.
Even with the Internet, the acquisition of Japanese-language reading materials remains something of an ordeal in the United States. The US division of Amazon stocks relatively few Japanese-language titles. The demand simply isn’t there.
At the same time, US-based, independently owned mail-order Japanese bookstores have mostly gone out of business. This is yet another case of the Internet ruining a business model without providing an acceptable substitute.
I recall Sasuga Bookstore of Cambridge, Massachusetts with particular fondness. I purchased many books from them throughout the 1990s and early 00s. (Sasuga closed its doors for good in 2010. 残念でした.)
Amanda Kearns assumes that her work-related visit to the Lakeview Towers office complex in Ohio will mean just another sales call.
But she’s very wrong!
Amanda and her two colleagues, Hugh and Evan, step through the wrong door in the vast building’s interior.
On the other side, they find themselves trapped inside the Maze.
The Maze is a labyrinthine parallel universe filled with both supernatural and human menaces.
Killer robots await. Giant, carnivorous birds patrol the skies. Wraithlike beings called “watchers” hunt the unwary.
Also inside the Maze is a ragtag group of ordinary people…who are struggling to free themselves from a demigod tyrant, the Director.
Amanda, Hugh, and Evan must decide: should they join the fight for freedom, or risk all in a gamble to return to their own world?
THE MAZE is a riveting emotional tale wrapped within a fantasy adventure, THE MAZE is sure to appeal to adult readers who fondly recall childhood parallel universe stories like “Through the Looking Glass” and “The Chronicles of Narnia”.
