Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Sunday October 17, 2010
|
ROSE IN A STORM
Jon Katz
Villard
ISBN 978 0 345 50265 0
217 pages
$24
Reviewed by Yvonne Zipp
Pop culture is full of loyal, dedicated dogs: Balto, Lassie, that St. Bernard who's always pulling people out of snowbanks. But they're all slackers next to Rose, a border collie with the heart of an elephant and the stamina of Sylvester Stallone. Rose wouldn't run for help if Timmy fell down a well -- she'd drag the kid out herself, perform CPR and have his clothes laundered and ironed before his parents knew anything was wrong.
In "Rose in a Storm," Jon Katz's first novel in a decade, we learn that Rose snubs petting hands and regards sheepdog trials as the province of dilettantes. She has such a strong work ethic that she would scorn Farmer Hoggett's praise to Babe, "That'll do, pig," as gross flattery. But Rose is about to get enough work for 30 border collies.
When the novel opens, a 100-year blizzard is closing in on the farm, and Rose is the only thing standing between the cows, the sheep, the chickens and an icy death. Oh, and a pack of coyotes is circling. The farm's prognosis was grim even before the snow started falling: Farmer Sam is suffering from depression after the death of his wife and is about to sell out.
Katz's many memoirs of life at his Bedlam Farm have a devoted following. I sobbed during the hospice parts of "Izzy & Lenore"; years later, all I have to do is recall the scene where a blind Alzheimer's patient smiles for the first time in months after Izzy noses his head under her hand, and I well up. But despite the dramatic setup of "Rose in a Storm" and Katz's long track record as a chronicler of dogs, this new novel has a curiously stoic tone. Rose doesn't have much of a sense of humor, and neither does the book.
Rose is, of course, modeled on Katz's own border collie of the same name, and fans will recognize other Bedlamites, such as a giant steer, a la Katz's Elvis. Katz notes that he interviewed animal behaviorists to make Rose's viewpoint as authentic as possible, and most of the novel hews strictly to what's going on in her mind. Unfortunately, the result is no "Story of Edgar Sawtelle," David Wroblewski's recent novel, which also had sections written from a dog's point of view.
This reader doesn't need convincing that all dogs go to heaven -- heck, if they can't make it in, who can? -- but Katz's occasional forays into doggie mysticism clash oddly with the matter-of-fact narration. At its heart, this slim novel is a love letter dedicated "to the real Rose," and it's probably best appreciated by dog lovers and Katz's most ardent fans. The rest of us should just reread his moving memoir "A Dog Year."
Yvonne Zipp reviews books regularly for the Christian Science Monitor.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
|
| Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top |
MAGIC AND MAYHEM: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy From Korea to Afghanistan
Derek Leebaert
Simon & Schuster
ISBN 978-1439125694
336 pages
$26
Reviewed by Robert G. Kaiser
How refreshing to read a smart, polemical book that is deliciously rude to many great pooh-bahs of our time while making good sense about the mess the United States now finds itself in across the globe. On these grounds alone Derek Leebaert deserves our gratitude. But he performs a greater service by ringing a persuasive alarm bell about the dangers inherent in our repeated attempts to put things right in countries we don't really understand and cannot control, from Korea six decades ago to Afghanistan right now. And he does it without any of the ideological tendentiousness so typical of our public debate these days.
The magical thinking of Leebaert's title is the recurring American self-deception that we have what it takes to persuade the peoples of foreign lands whose histories, cultures and traditions have little in common with ours to see and do things our way. So Dick Cheney, one of the pooh-bahs whom Leebaert gleefully eviscerates, promised us that "the (Iraqi) people will be so happy with their freedoms (after a U.S. invasion) that we'll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two." Magical thinking.
The mayhem of the title is what happens, like proverbial clockwork, when we allow magical thinking to take us into another far-flung adventure that doesn't pan out. So the lessons of Vietnam do not help us avoid the fiasco of Iraq, and the failures in Iraq somehow convince us to double down in Afghanistan. Leebaert doesn't dwell on the point, but these three unsuccessful American enterprises share one attribute: "Success" for the United States in all of them would require leadership from local politicians in the country we are "helping," who will conduct themselves intelligently, honorably, effectively and in ways that fulfill American aspirations. Good luck with that.
Leebaert builds on the category described by David Halberstam more than four decades ago, the best and the brightest. They were the wizards of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who took us into Vietnam and whom Halberstam skewered in his book of that name. Leebaert sees that Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Maxwell Taylor and the rest were early examples of what has become a permanent feature of our national security elite: "emergency men," eager to show their strength and resolve by launching new foreign adventures. Typically, he writes, they succumb to "the illusion that America as Lone Ranger can set the world right." He adds: "Emergency men regard themselves as personally wearing the badge." So Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Cheney and the hapless Jerry Bremmer, who presided with dizzying incompetence over the initial American occupation of Iraq, are members of a long chain of similar figures, our masters of mayhem. Leebaert worries that Gen. David Petraeus, now our commander in Afghanistan, will fall into this category as well.
"We can safely conclude," Leebaert writes, after making the case convincingly, "that the American foreign policy establishment is not up to the task of world leadership as posed by the country's far-flung political and military involvements." Who could refute this judgment? What evidence do we have to the contrary? Leebaert's idea of a better approach would combine fewer global commitments and a larger, smarter professional foreign service and civil service, with fewer political appointees to pursue new global enthusiasms every four or eight years. No architect of the Iraq War spoke Arabic or had experienced life in the Middle East, he notes -- a pattern evident in our earlier disasters. Neither McNamara nor Bundy knew anything about Asia, let alone Vietnam. Instead of pretending that we know it all, Leebaert argues, why not develop a cadre of real specialists who will know enough to keep us out of trouble?
This book is lively and engaging, in no way a policy wonk's tome. Some readers will be annoyed by the author's presumption to know it all. This can be simultaneously very entertaining, as when he slices Henry Kissinger into ribbons, but frustrating when he passes a definitive judgment that seems dead wrong. This reader was exasperated by repeated references to the Soviet Union that seemed far wide of the mark. For example, Leebaert calls the U.S.S.R. of the 1980s "the same rigid monolith as in the 1930s," though the U.S.S.R. of the '80s, when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, was the very antithesis of a "rigid monolith" and ended with the Soviet Union falling apart.
So you won't agree with Leebaert about everything -- no matter. If you can't disprove his large thesis, then you confront this painful conclusion: We have squandered tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars on foolish attempts to remake a world we simply cannot guide. And we're still doing it.
Robert G. Kaiser, associate editor of The Washington Post, covered the Vietnam War and the Soviet Union for this newspaper. He can be reached at kaiserr(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
|
| Comment on this Story | Printer Friendly | Share | Top |
|
|
 |
|
| Recent Stories |
 THE LOST DOGS: Michael Vick's Dogs and Their Tale of Rescue and Redemption
SARAH: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt
A GEOGRAPHY OF SECRETS
BIBLE: The Story of the King James Version, 1611-2011
THE WAVE: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
