Notes from Underground 50%

Now our narrator begins a narrative demonstrating the philosophical points. Example: he is insulted by a military officer.He decides to be brave and not step aside in the road when this officer comes upon him. They will bump, and that will prove he is not a fly. Absurd, and now our narrator is preparing for the bump by buying new gloves and getting a new coat so that he will be properly dressed for the big event!

Comments

Puppy, Story by George Saunders

PUPPY Dysfunctional family has puppy that they need to get rid of. Mom places ad; family is coming over. Description of family. Mom: husband changed from long-haired attractive to stooped old man. Husband: talks constantly of living on a farm and doing what needs to be done, though he never lived on a farm. Conversations together: Sell and move to Arizona, get hooked on phonics for kids, buying a car wash. . . wonderful randomness. Straight-laced suburbanite comes to look at puppy. Seems like she will buy it, even though she is repelled by house. (Dog turds on carpet, filthy.) She is proud of how accepting she is until she looks out window and sees white trash's son tied by harness to a tree. Reader knows he is a menace to himself, darting across I-90, for example. Suburban mother beats hasty retreat, leaving dog to be (probably) drowned by dad who does what has to be done. Suburbanite remembers her own pathetic ch...

Napoleon, Ch 18 Blockades

"The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude. . . . Courage is only the second." Conquers cities of present day Germany. Spandau, Berlin, etc. Shortage of men in France . . . Russians next, but his mind is on Britain. He wants to use trade sanctions to force Britain to its knees, but this doesn't work either. French (and others in empire) need to trade with Brits. Smuggling results. Also, unintended consequences crop up. Example is shoes: Napoleon requires 200,000 pairs of shoes from Hamburg. Hamburg can't supply these to Napoleon, so they buy what they can't produce from Brits. So much for the sanctions! British are supplying uniforms and shoes for Napoleon, and making $$$. . . . Continues after the Russians in December 1806. . . has to withdraw, 40% of his army out of commission. Horrible battle with Russians, thousands killed. Napoleon in tears . . . dire moment, Napoleon orders full out cavalry attack . . . Eylau a massacre without any result . ...

Napoleon, mainly Egyptian campaign.

Napoleon genuinely enjoyed being with his soldiers. He was modern in that he used praise to motivate. "Severe to officers, kindly to men" was his mantra. Tremendous memory--story of asking a minor minister how his two children were doing . . . he had met the minister once, ten years earlier. . . Admiration for Andrea Doria even though his star had fallen . . . Josephine "psychotic extravagence." Bona fide intellectual . . . the attack on Egypt included scientists, geologists, poets. It resulted in a 20 volume scholarly work on all things Egypt "Denon's Description l'Egypte (last remaining handwritten copy burned in the the Arab Spring uprising in December of 2011, along with 192,000 other books in a Cairo library) . . . In Malta, Napoleon immediately reformed the government, freed political prisoners, installed street lights, postal service, hospitals . . . generally well received by intellectuals as a liberator, hated by religious conservatives and...

Carl Deuker -- Books, Movies, TV

Search This Blog