Passing the buck...

I am occasionally asked if blogging isn't a distraction from more "worthy" writing projects, and I explain that the habit is a bit like the oil pump in a car. It keeps the writing muscles lubricated and active so that the engine is primed when it is time to produce some literary horsepower. I admit that it is sometimes a welcome distraction from other mundane tasks, doing the laundry, for instance. But rarely am I so busy with other writing that I had better not waste time blogging.

One of those times is now. I've just returned from an absurdly short trip to Haiti, organized at the last moment to cover the Ghetto Biennale, a unique cultural interchange between the sculptors of the Grand Rue, residents of a teeming Port au Prince slum, and an international coterie of visiting artists with a diverse array of site-specific projects. Almost all the visitors had their preconceptions immediately challenged, if not shattered, by their initial exposure to the difficult conditions and the level of poverty they encountered.

But because I will need to spend several days formulating my thoughts on the Biennale into numerous newspaper articles and at least one radio piece, I don't have time to tell you more about it here. Instead I would direct those of you frantic for your daily dose of travel musing to go and read my father's fascinating initial account of his recent trip to Israel.

To whet your appetite, here are a few of his delicious observations,

on Jewish celebration:

"...the ceremony of most Jewish festivities—(boils) down to three propositions:(1) They tried to kill us. 2) They failed. (3) So, let’s eat."

on food and its role in Jewish versus Christian community:

"An agnostic can have a fine time at a Shabbat meal; he is unlikely to go to High Mass for either the sociability or the gastronomy."

on the church at Bethlehem, in the West Bank:

"I didn’t have the sense of the money-changers actually having taken over the control of the temple as I did with some of the more familiar Christian sites in Jerusalem."

Enjoy.

I like to think it runs in the family dept.

Watch my erudite father discussing his new book, The Anti-Communist Manifestos, on C-Span.

From A Brooklynite on the Ice

It's been out for almost three weeks...

If you haven't read my father's new book yet, GET WITH IT!



I know, you thought he was a medievalist, but John V. Fleming steadfastly refuses to be pigeon-holed, and in about the time it takes me to put together a decent blog entry he wrote a fascinating analysis of four books very much of and about their time: those grisly years of intrigue between the wars and after, when our necessary alliance with the Soviet Union morphed into the cold war. You might call it a literary procedural; he follows the evolution of four writers who, although initially captivated by Communism, turned away from Stalin and survived to tell the tale. Ultimately each wrote a book condemning the Soviet incarnation of their once-beloved ideology, and these books are the heroes in my father's account; the authors range from the shady and frustrated one-hit wonder "Jan Valtin" to the tortured genius Arthur Koestler. That their motivations and aspirations are often unclear makes this an all the more fascinating read. I highly recommend it.